While Cabrera was speaking Rollo grew slowly chill, and then ice-cold with horror. "Sir," he said, his voice suddenly hoarse and broken, "surely you do not realise what you are saying. These ladies are under my protection. They have committed themselves to my care under the most sacred and absolute pledges that their lives shall be respected. The same is the case with regard to Senor Munoz. It is absolutely necessary that I should place them all under the care of General Elio as the personal representative of the King!" "I have already told you, sir," cried Cabrera, furiously, "that I am of equal rank with any Elio or other general in the armies of Don Carlos. Have not I done more than any other? Was it not I who carried my command to the gates of Madrid? Aye, and had I been left to myself, I should have succeeded in cutting off that fox Mendizabal. Now, however, I am absolutely independent, owing authority to no man, save to the King alone. It is mine to give or to withhold, to punish or to pardon. Therefore I, General Ramon Cabrera, having sworn publicly to avenge my mother, when, where, and how I can, solemnly declare that, as a retaliation, I will shoot these three prisoners to-morrow at sunrise, even as Nogueras, the representative of this woman who calls herself Queen-Regent of Spain, shot down my innocent mother for the sole crime of giving birth to an unworthy son! Take them away! I will hear no more!" * * * * * Thus in a moment was Rollo toppled from the highest pinnacle of happiness, for such to a young man is the hope of immediate success. He cursed the hour he had entered the bloodthirsty land of Spain. He cursed his visit to the Abbey of Montblanch, and the day on which he accepted a commission from men without honour or humanity. He was indeed almost in case to do himself a hurt, and both Concha and the Sergeant watched him with anxious solicitude during the remainder of the afternoon as he wandered disconsolately about the little camp, twirling his moustache and clanking Killiecrankie at his heels with so fierce an air, that even Cabrera's officers, no laggards on the field of honour, kept prudently out of his way. The royal party had been disposed in a small house, a mere summer residence of some of the _bourgeois_ folk of Aranda, and there, by an unexpected act of grace and at the special supplication of the Sergeant, La Giralda had been permitted to wait upon them. The beauty of Concha was not long in producing its usual effect upon the impressionable sons of Navarre and Guipuzcoa. But the Sergeant, whose _prestige_ was unbounded, soon gave them to understand that the girl had better be left to go her own way, having two such protectors as Rollo and El Sarria to fight her battles for her.