"If you are indeed determined, you shall have that of Brother Domingo," said Teodoro; "he was of little more than your height, and died, not of the plague, but simply from doing his duty." "Then let me die in no other way!" said Concha, putting it on as happily as another maiden might dress for a ball. These three went out to their terrible task, and as they were harnessing the bullock cart once more and spreading a clean cloth over it, Rollo, moved in his heart of hearts, came near. Never did two such lovers as they meet more strangely arrayed. Yet he laid his black gauntlet across her arm and whispered a word which Brother Teodoro did not hear, being, as he took good care to be, much busied about the straps and harnessings. "I do not think that Love will let us die--yet!" he said. "That is a prayer. Amen!" said Concha, in a whisper, lifting her eyes to his. It was a strange betrothing, and little said. But when at last he put the ox-goad in her hands, Concha knew that the night had indeed passed away and that the morning was come. CHAPTER XXXIX A HANDFUL OF ROSES Patiently and softly went the oxen about the little pottage garden of the friars, till, where the soil was sandiest and the ground most open, under a south-looking wall on which the roses were still clustering (for they grow roses late at La Granja), lo! a trench was dug. It was not so deep as a rich man's grave in other countries, but in Spain as elsewhere a little earth covers a multitude of sorrows. The long shallow trench had been the last work of the two remaining monks ere they departed to their duty in the stricken village. Savage men, heathen of heart and cruel of hand, might await them there. Black plague would certainly lurk in every doorway. Yet these two brothers, simple in the greatness of their faith--not of the wise of the land, not of the apparent salt of the earth, but only plain devout men, ignorant of all beyond their breviaries and their duty to their fellows--had gone forth as quietly and unostentatiously as a labouring man shoulders his mattock and trudges to his daily toil.