"D'ye hear? Am I to wait all day while you stand there chattering?" Sir Percy bawled out. And he strode back into the chapel. Everybody made haste to follow. But before they could see whence it proceeded a horrible noise set their teeth on edge. It was as though somebody was creaking a basket-lid near a hive of buzzing bees. Antonio knew that the saw had begun to revolve. He pressed forward and found Sir Percy's gray-headed stolid man-servant Jackson working a treadle at the foot of the azulejos. High above Jackson's head the saw was grinding round in the acidulated cement. "It works!" cried Sir Percy. "D'ye hear, all of you? D'ye see? It works!" As the saw's teeth bit and chewed the acrid cud a fine gritty dust flew up into a sunbeam and glittered like the spray of a waterfall. The noise increased, until it resembled the drawing of a great slate pencil backwards along a vast slate. Isabel and Mrs. Baxter put their fingers in their ears. "It works, it works, it works!" repeated Sir Percy. His eyes shone. Antonio glanced at him and shuddered. One moment he looked like a boy of twenty; the next, he looked a hundred years old. The saw went on gnawing, gnawing, biting, biting, screaming, screaming, like an obscene fiend, until the back of one azulejo seemed to be wholly cut through. This first azulejo--a tile about eight inches long--formed part of the multi-colored border which framed the picture of the Saint's pious boyhood. Antonio watched it with a white face and a thumping heart. Suddenly he shouted: "Look out! Stand clear!" Almost in the same instant the tile leaped forward and crashed down upon the pavement, smashing up into four or five pieces. Mrs. Baxter wailed aloud. Isabel sprang like a flash to examine the damage, and the others were soon at her elbows. They found that the saw had cut down cleanly to a certain distance; but the tile had fallen outward before the scission was complete, and the cement on its lower part had broken jaggedly from the wall. Sir Percy closed and opened his eyes like a man dazed. Isabel moved to his side. But he recovered himself swiftly and brushed her away. "What does it matter?" he demanded, in great wrath and scorn. "What are you all standing there like stuck pigs for? It's the border. We can mend it. What does it matter? D'ye hear?" He cast a glance at the saw. It was correctly placed for cutting down the azulejo which stood below its fallen neighbor. Waving Jackson aside he placed his own foot on the treadle and worked away with feverish energy. Hummings, creakings, and screamings once more filled the holy place. After the onlookers had fallen back a few yards, the monk found himself close to Isabel. He did not look at her, nor she at him; but he felt instinctively that she was not on his side. Standing with tense limbs and straining eyes she seemed to be putting her whole mind and will towards her father's triumph and Antonio's defeat.