"Then we will proceed. Go, do your part. You may trust La Giralda. Go quickly. You have much to do."
And little Concha snapped to the shutter of the wicket in his face.
Much to do. Yes, it was true. What with Dolóres in the power of his false friend Luis and the evil hag Tia Elvira, his gentlemen to attend upon at their inn, and the grave-digger lying with a broken head in the garden, El Sarria might be said to have had some private business upon his hands. And this, too, in addition to his affairs of state—the Abbot's commission, his own outlawry, and the equal certainty of his being shot whether he fell into the hands of the Carlists or of the national soldiers.
Yet in spite of all these, never since the evil night of his first home-coming to Sarria had he been so happy as when he retraced his way in company with La Giralda in the direction of the mill-house.
And as he went, thinking no thought save of Dolóres and his love, suddenly the only man who would have dared to cross his path stood before him.
"Ah, sirrah," cried Rollo the Scot, "is this your service? To run the country with women—and not even to have the sense to choose a pretty one. What mean you by this negligence, dog of Galicia?"
"I attend to my own affairs," answered Ramon, with a sullen and boding quiet; "do me the favour to go about yours."
Hot-blood Rollo leaped upon him without a word, taking the older and stronger man at unawares with his young litheness. He saw Ramon's fingers moving to the knife in its sheath by his side. But ere they could reach it, his hand was on the giant's wrist and his pistol at his ear.
"A finger upon your Albacetan and you die!" cried Rollo. "I would have you Gallegans learn that the servant is not greater than his lord."
Now Ramon knew that not his life, but that of Rollo, hung on a hair. For he was conscious that La Giralda's knife was bare and that that determined lady was simply choosing her opportunity. If Rollo had been older most likely Ramon would have waited motionless for Giralda's thrust, and then turned the young man under his heel, precisely as he had done to the grave-digger earlier in the evening. But as they rode from the abbey he had admired the young fellow's gallant bearing and perhaps heard also of his flouting of his own Miguelete enemies at the inn of San Vicente. So for this time he had pity upon him.