"But remember," continued Rollo, "in order to compass this I am stretching a good many points. I saw your eye brighten just now when I spoke of giving orders. Now, remember, if there is the slightest attempt at foul play, we may indeed lose our game, and with it our lives, but first of all and quite suddenly, one man shall die, and that man is—Luis Fernandez."
He added this asseveration—
"And this, I, Rollo Blair, of Blair Castle in the Shire of Fife, swear by Almighty God and the honour of a Scottish gentleman."
CHAPTER XVII
A GRAVE IRREGULARITY
The day wore in the mill-house of Sarria precisely as many thousands of days had done before. The foreman came for the keys from his master's bedroom at six of the clock. He wondered at the unwonted sight of his patron up and fully dressed at that hour, and still more at the tall young foreigner who sat with his book so studiously silent at the table opposite his master. The old gipsy woman Elvira, too, was gone and another in her place. But after all it was none of his business, and the mill must go on. For the dam had filled up and there was much corn to grind. Old withered Elisa, the goatherd "patrona," led her tinkling flock past the door a score of yards and then returned with her pail as was her wont. She saw Señor Fernandez at his window, and he made a strange appealing motion with his hands to her, then glanced over his shoulder.
Perhaps (so she thought) the poor man had taken to drinking at night as that wicked brother of his used to do down at the venta. But the true nature of the Señor's complaint did not dawn upon her till later.
From nine till half-past eleven none outside of the mill-house saw Señor Luis. The stranger also was absent upon his occasions, and the doctor, coming early to see his patient, found only the gipsy woman, who did not appear to have understood the directions he had given her the day before. The Señor himself was out of the way, but the doctor, glad to find his patient so quiescent and apparently in such good condition, soon took his leave, and in the mill-house La Giralda ruled alone.