"Yes," answered Teodoro, calmly, "our brother, whose duty it was to collect the bodies of the plague-stricken, died two days ago, and the oxen have not been in the town since. As for me, I too have been sick--a mere _calentura_, though for a time the brethren feared that the plague had laid its hand on me also; and as for those other two, they have enough to do to keep up their ministrations among the living. To give the last sacrament to the dying is, after all, more important than to cover up the dead. At such times one has to remember how that once on a time the Virgin's Son said, 'Let the dead bury their dead!'" He was silent a little, as if composing a homily on this text. "But all things work good to the chosen of God," he said. "To-night we will make of these very dead an army to defend our little Queen--the Lord's anointed. For in this matter I do not think as do the most of my brothers of the Church. I am no Carlist, God be my witness!" Rollo was still in a maze of wonder and doubt when they arrived at the little stables attached to the long low building of the Hermitage and began to harness the oxen to the cart. He prided himself on his quickness of resource, but this was clean beyond him. "One of us must abide here," continued the monk. "I am still sick unto death, so that I greatly fear I can give you no help. Bleeding and this _calentura_ together have left me without power in my old arms. But lend me your pistols, of which you will have no need. I am an old soldier of the wars of the Independence, and have not forgotten mine ancient skill with the weapons of the flesh. Do not fear for the little Princess. Only make such speed as you can." And with the utmost haste the Basque instructed Rollo as to his behaviour when he should reach the town, whilst at the same time he was helping him into the dress of a Brother of Pity and arranging the hood across his face. "Hold your head well down," so ran the monk's rubric for the dread office, "repeat in a loud voice '_Bring out your dead! Bring out your dead!_' No more than that and no less. With the butt of your ox-staff strike the doors whereon you see painted the red cross, and those that remain will bring out whom the plague hath smitten." The young man listened as in a dream. The oxen started at the friar's gentle chirrup. The ox-staff was placed in Rollo's hand, and lo, he was guiding the meek bent heads softly towards the town before he even realised that he was now to encounter a foe far more terrible than any he had ever faced in battle or at the rapier's point upon the field of honour.