"Senor Don Luis," he said, "if I had ten Paradises from which to choose my eternal pleasures, I would not tell you! If I had as many hells from which to select for you the tortures of the damned, I would not speak a word which might aid such a villain in his villany! Let it suffice for you to know that Dolores Garcia is now where you will never reach her, and as for her husband--why, you cowardly dog, asleep or awake, sick or well, you dare not venture within a mile of him! Nay, I doubt greatly if you dare even face him dead!" Fernandez rose and motioned his brother to the handle which turned the great wooden wheel at Rollo's feet. Then the young man lay very still, listening to the dismal groaning of the ungreased bearings and wondering almost idly what was about to happen to him. * * * * * "God in Heaven, he is here! I tell you I heard him cry! Do you think I do not know his voice? I will tear up the floor with my fingers, if you do not make haste!" It was Concha who spoke or rather shouted these words along the rabbit-warren of passages which ran this way and that under the Abbey of Montblanch. But it had been through Ezquerra and La Giralda that the dread rumour of danger to Rollo had first come to Sarria. The gipsies have strange ways of knowledge--mole-runs and rat-holes beneath, birds of the air to carry the matter above. Some servitor in the Monastery, with a drop of black blood in him, had heard a word let fall by Don Tomas Fernandez in his cups. The brothers, so he boasted, would not now have long to wait. The cherry had dropped into their mouths of its own accord--thus Don Tomas, half-seas-over, averred--or at least his confessorship would shake the bough and the fruit would come down with a run. This silly Tomas also knew who was to have Rollo's horse when all was over--a _tostado_ not met with every day. It was enough--more than enough. From Sarria to Espluga in Francoli Concha raged through the villages like fire through summer grass. The Abbey--the Friars, the accumulated treasure of centuries, the power of pit and gallows, of servitude and Holy Office--all these were to end on the twentieth of the month. Meantime a man was being tortured, done to death by ghouls--a friend of El Sarria, a friend of Jose Maria--nay, the saviour of two Queens and the beloved of generals and Prime Ministers! Would they help to save him? Ah, would they not! Other rumours came up, thick and rank as toadstools on dead wood. There was such-an-one of the village of Esplena, such-an-other of Campillo in the nether Francoli--they refused the Friars this, that, and the other! Well, did not they enter the Monastery walls, never to be heard of more?