The robbers grouped themselves around her; the convict presenting her with a fragment of the wall as a seat.
"Do not listen! do not listen!" cried Perico, beside himself; "she purposes a sacrilege!"
"Sir," said the convict to Diego, "oblige that agonizing priest to hold his tongue, he is like the dog in the manger. Let this good woman speak, and we shall know what she has to say--a regiment of horse couldn't silence that dismal screech-owl."
Diego hesitated, but finally turned toward the hag, and Perico, knowing then that hope was lost, for the bandit always followed his first impulses, rushed away, running hither and thither among the olives like a madman.
The gipsy had calculated everything, and her measures were well taken. The great advantages so exaggerated, the difficulties so easily overcome, the well-arranged precautions, upon which she amplified so largely, produced their effect. The temptation which offers flowers with one hand and with the other hides the thorns, convinced some and seduced others.
All the plans were settled, and the hours and signals agreed upon, and before the cocks, day's faithful sentinels, announced his coming, the band was on its way to the solitary hacienda of "El Cuervo," and the old witch crawling like a cunning and venomous snake to her den in the wood of Alcalá, where in the depths of the earth she had conceived the crime to which amidst darkness and ruins she had persuaded evil-doers--the crime which was to be perpetrated in the temple of God.
CHAPTER XIX.
Heavily passed the hours of the succeeding day to the idle guests of El Cuervo. All Perico's representations and prayers had failed to dissuade Diego from his impious design. Diego would never turn back; and this stupid tenacity in pursuing a course which he knew to be wrong, had cost him respect and honor, and was still to cost him liberty and life. It had, moreover, at the instigation of the convict, forced Perico, who had at last resolved to leave the band, to accompany it on this atrocious expedition--that vile man suggesting to Diego that there was no other means of preventing the saint from denouncing them.
All mounted and at midnight reached the ruined castle of Alcalá. Diego whistled three times. Directly after, the gipsy, holding a dark lantern, emerged from one of the vaults which open at the base of the castle. They dismounted and followed her.
Perico would have escaped by flight from the evil pass in which he found himself, but his companions surrounded him and dragged him with them whither the woman led. She, after saluting the robbers in a fawning voice, opened with a picklock the door of a rude court filled with rubbish and timbers. From the court a postern leads into the vestry, and through this the sacrilegious band entered the church, not without dread and trembling even at the sound of their own footsteps.