A simultaneous movement of this kind, through so wide an extent of country, intimates a well-concerted plan of operations; and we may share in the astonishment of the Castillan writers, that a secret of such a nature, and known to so many individuals, should have been so long and faithfully kept,--in the midst, too, of those who had the greatest interest in detecting it,[41]--some of them, it may be added, spies of the Inquisition, endowed, as they seem to have been, with almost supernatural powers for scenting out the taint of heresy.[42] It argues an intense feeling of hatred in the Morisco, that he could have been so long proof against the garrulity that loosens the tongue, and against the sympathy that so often, in similar situations, unlocks the heart, to save some friend from the doom of his companions. But no such instance, either of levity or lenity, occurred among this extraordinary people. And when the hour arrived, and the Christians discerned their danger in the menacing looks and gestures of their Moslem neighbours, they were as much astounded by it as the unsuspecting traveller on whom, as he heedlessly journeys through some pleasant country, the highwayman has darted from his covert by the roadside. The first impulse of the Christians seems to have been very generally to take refuge in the churches; and every village, however small, had at least one church, where the two races met together to join in the forms of Christian worship. The fugitives thought to find protection in their holy places and in the presence of their venerated pastors, whose spiritual authority had extended over all the inhabitants. But the wild animal of the forest, now that he had regained his freedom, gave little heed to the call of his former keeper,--unless it were to turn and rend him. Here crowded together, like a herd of panic-stricken deer with the hounds upon their track, the terrified people soon found the church was no place of security, and they took refuge in the adjoining tower, as a place of greater strength, and affording a better means of defence against an enemy. The mob of their pursuers then broke into the church, which they speedily despoiled of its ornaments, trampling the crucifixes and other religious symbols under their feet, rolling the sacred images in the dust, and desecrating the altars by the sacrifice of swine, or by some other act denoting their scorn and hatred of the Christian worship.[43]