Ramon, with the babe in his arms, put his head within, and spoke to Concha. A little cry, swiftly checked, came forth from the whitewashed portress' lodge of the House of the Innocents. Then after five minutes Ramon kissed the little puckered face of his son, and each of the dimpled fat red hands he held so tightly clenched, and laid him on the revolving iron plate of the conventual turnstile. Without a creek the axle turned, and in a moment more the child was in the arms of Holy Church, pleasantly represented for the nonce by the very secular charms of little Concha Cabezos. Then a word or two were spoken. Concha told the outlaw how, by a letter purporting to come from himself, forged by Don Luis or his brother, Dolores had been advised to put herself under the protection of his beloved friend Don Luis Fernandez "until the happier days." Concha also told how the miller had found an excuse to send her from the house in disgrace, and how for her needlework and skill in fine broidery she had been received at the Convent of the Holy Innocents, how Manuela from the priest's house and this gipsy wise-woman "Tia Elvira" had watched over Dolores ever since, not allowing her to hold any communication with the outside world, and especially with her former waiting-maid. "Then came the news of your death," she continued, "and after that the guard upon Dolores was redoubled, and till to-night I have heard nothing. But the babe shall be safe and unknown here among the sisters. Yet for the future's sake give me some token that you may claim him by. All such things are entered in a book as being brought with a child." El Sarria passed within the turnstile a golden wristlet his mother had given him at his first communion, when he was the best and most dutiful boy in all Sarria, and held by the priest to be a pattern communicant. "Can you not stay yet other twenty-four hours in Sarria?" asked Concha. "If so, we must try to bring your Dolores where she will be as safe as the child." "I would stay a year to preserve from harm a hair of her head--I who have wronged her!" "Ah," sighed Concha through the wicket, as if she knew all about unworthy suspicion on the part of lovers, "men are like that. They are ready to suspect the most loving and the most innocent, but we women forgive them!" Then pouting her pretty red lips the little Concha spoke low in the ear of El Sarria a while. After five minutes of this whispered colloquy, she added aloud-- "Then we will proceed. Go, do your part. You may trust La Giralda. Go quickly. You have much to do." And little Concha snapped to the shutter of the wicket in his face.