Twice he sprang up from the stone bench where he had seated himself, ground his heel into the gravel brought from the river-bed beneath, and muttered a characteristic imprecation, "Ten for one of their women I have slain already--by San Vicente after this it shall be a hundred!" For La Giralda was telling him the tale of his mother's shooting by Nogueras. Then all suddenly he reseated himself, and beckoned to Concha. "Come hither," he said; "let me see these fellows' papers, and tell me how they came into your hands!" Concha was ready. "The Senor, the tall stranger, had a mission to the Lady Superior of the Convent," she began. "From Don Baltasar Varela it was, Prior of the great Carlist Monastery of Montblanch. He trusted his papers into her hands as a guarantee of his loyalty and good faith, and here they are!" Concha flashed them from her bosom and laid them in the general's hands. Usually Cabrera was blind to female charms, but upon this occasion his eye rested with pleasure on the quick and subtle grace of the Andaluse. "Then you are a nun?" he queried, looking sharply at her figure and dress. "Ah, no," replied Concha, thinking with some hopefulness that she was to have at least a hearing, "I am not even a lay sister. The good Lady Superior had need of a housekeeper--one who should be free of the convent and yet able to transact business without the walls. It is a serious thing (as your honour knows) to provision even a hundred men who can live rough and eat sparely--how much harder to please a convent-school filled from end to end with the best blood in Spain! And good blood needs good feeding----" "As I well knew when I was a butcher in Tortosa!" quoth Cabrera, smiling. "There were a couple of ducal families within the range of my custom, and they consumed more beef and mutton than a whole _barrio_ of poor pottage-eaters!" To make Cabrera smile was more than half the battle. "You are sure they had nothing to do with the slayers of my mother?" He was fierce again in a moment, and pulled the left flange of his moustache into his mouth with a quick nervous movement of the fingers. "I will undertake that no one of them hath ever been further South than this village of Sarria," said Concha, somewhat hastily, and without sufficient authority. Cabrera looked at the papers. There was a Carlist commission in the name of Don Rollo Blair duly made out, a letter from General Elio, chief of the staff, commending all the four by name and description to all good servants of Don Carlos, as trustworthy persons engaged on a dangerous and secret mission. Most of all, however, he seemed to be impressed with the ring belonging to Etienne, with its revolving gem and concealed portrait of Carlos the Fifth. He placed it on his finger and gazing intently, asked to whom it belonged. As soon as he understood, he summoned the little Frenchman to his presence. Etienne came at the word, calm as usual, and twirling his moustache in the manner of Rollo.