Without her usual animation Juanita recounted how she had been captured as she neared Morata by a party of troopers, among whom she had recognized Perez, Miguel’s one-eyed man. She had been treated kindly enough by the wife of a colonel of chasseurs, who, however, irritated her beyond endurance by constant reference to her approaching marriage. Miguel himself had only seen her once. He had asked what had become of her father’s old servant José, and shown some annoyance when she refused to answer. But she had had another and a more frequent visitor. After the capitulation, Padre Consolacion had been surprised to find that, though he had been as consistent an opponent as Don Basilio and Santiago Sass, he had not met with the same fate at the hands of the French. He could only conclude that he owed his security to the good offices of Miguel, whom, however, he now held in utter abhorrence. Making his escape from the city, he had gone into hiding at Morata, where he soon learnt of what had befallen Juanita. It was not difficult for him, with the assistance of the people of the house, to obtain secret interviews with her. On the day before Miguel went with Commissary Taberne on the foraging expedition, Juanita learnt from the colonel’s wife that pressure was to be brought to bear in high quarters for the purpose of bringing about her marriage with Don Miguel. She sent a message by a secret channel to Padre Consolacion, informing him of this alarming news. On the next evening, almost at the moment when Jack was surprising the commissary, she had slipped out of the house in the dress of one of the Spanish maid-servants, fled to where the priest was awaiting her, and by him was escorted to the convent, where she was joined in a few days by the duenna, after the sudden swoop of Antonio had cleared the place of French. "The padre is a trump," said Jack. "I confess I didn’t like him in Saragossa; but then, of course, he hadn’t found Miguel out. I thought he must be either stupid or something worse. I shall do him more justice in future." He would not perhaps have been so cordial if he had known that it was to Padre Consolacion he owed the strange alteration in Juanita’s manner which had puzzled him. When he left her in the convent, the padre’s last words had been: "Now, querida mia, though I have helped you to escape a marriage with a traitor and a villain, remember I shall not approve, I shall forbid, your marriage with a heretic. You will understand me." All unconscious of this, Jack waxed eloquent in praise of the padre, and went on: "Well now, I’ve something to tell you besides what you have heard from Pepito. You remember that a letter left with General Palafox for my father disappeared—a letter about your property?" "Yes. I hate the sound of the word ’property’." "I have the letter. It was—perhaps you guess—in the possession of Miguel."