How could I hold a man so that he should be stabbed from behind in my arms? Castro was running up swiftly, his cloak opening like a pair of sable wings. Collecting all my strength, I forced O’Brien round, and we swung about in a flash. Now he had his back to the gate. My effort seemed to have uprooted him. I felt him give way all over. As soon as our position had changed, Castro checked himself, and stepped aside into the shadow of the guardroom doorway. I don’t think O’Brien had been aware of what had been going on. His strength was overborne by mine. I drove him backwards. His eyes blinked wildly. He bared his teeth. He resisted, as though I had been forcing him over the brink of perdition. His feet clung to the flagstones. I shook him till his head rolled. “Viper brood!” he spluttered. “Out you go!” I hissed. I had found nothing heroic, nothing romantic to say--nothing that would express my desperate resolve to rid the world of his presence. All I could do was to fling him out. The Casa Riego was all my world--a World full of great pain, great mourning, and love. I saw him pitch headlong under the wheels of the bishop’s enormous carriage. The black coachman who had sat aloft, unmoved through all the tumult, in his white stockings and three-cornered hat, glanced down from his high box. And the two parts of the gate came together with a clang of ironwork and a heavy crash that seemed as loud as thunder under that vault. CHAPTER SIX Not even in memory am I willing to live over again those three days when Father Antonio, the old major-domo, and myself would meet each other in the galleries, in the _patio_, in the empty rooms, moving in the stillness of the house with heavy hearts and desolate eyes, which seemed to demand, “What is there to do?” Of course, precautions were taken against the Lugareños. They were besieging the Casa from afar. They had established a sort of camp at the end of the street, and they prowled about amongst the old, barricaded houses in their pointed hats, in their rags and finery; women, with food, passed constantly between the villages and the panic-stricken town; there were groups on the beach; and one of the schooners had been towed down the bay, and was lying, now, moored stem and stern opposite the great gate. They did nothing whatever active against us. They lay around and watched, as if in pursuance of a plan traced by a superior authority. They were watching for me. But when, by some mischance, they burnt the roof off the outbuildings that were at some distance from the Casa, their chiefs sent up a deputation of three, with apologies. Those men came unarmed, and, as it were, under Castro’s protection, and absolutely whimpered with regrets before Father Antonio. “Would his reverence kindly intercede with the most noble senorita?...” “Silence! Dare not pronounce her name!” thundered the good priest, snatching away his hand, which they attempted to grab and kiss.