The Sarrians therefore watched the mill-house blaze up, and thanked God that it stood some way from the other dwellings of the place.
Suddenly Cabrera turned upon them.
"Hearken ye, villagers of Sarria," he cried, "I have burned the home of a traitor. If I hear of any shelter being granted to Luis Fernandez or his brother within your bounds, I swear by the martyred honour of my mother that on my return I will burn every house within your walls and shoot every man of you capable of bearing arms. You have heard of Ramon Cabrera. Let that be enough."
The villagers got apprehensively behind each other, and none answered, each waiting for the other, till with mighty bass thunder the voice rang out again:
"Have you no answer?" he cried, "no promise? Must I set a dozen of you with your backs against the wall, as I did at Espluga in Francoli, to stimulate those dull country wits of yours?"
Then a young man gaily dressed was thrust to the front. Very unwilling he was to show himself, and at his appearance, with his knees knocking together, a merry laugh rang out from behind Cabrera.
That chieftain turned quickly with wrath in his eye. For it was a sound of a woman's mirth that was heard, and all such were strictly forbidden within his lines.
But at the sight of little Concha, her dark eyes full of light, her hands clapping together in innocent delight, her white teeth disclosed in gay and dainty laughter, a certain maja note of daring unconvention in her costume, she was so exactly all that would have sent him into raptures twenty years before when he was an apprentice in Tortosa, that the grim man only smiled and turned again to the unwilling spokesman of the municipality of Sarria.
A voice from the press before the burning house announced the delegate's quality.
"Don Raphael de Flores, son of our alcalde."