“Is it so certain that he is dead?” she asked. “When all is said, none actually saw him die, and you tell me that the body surrendered by Mulai-Ahmed-ben-Mahomet was disfigured beyond recognition. Is it not possible that he may have survived?” The lean, swarthy face of Frey Miguel grew pensive. He did not impatiently scorn the suggestion as she had half-feared he would. “In Portugal,” he answered slowly, “it is firmly believed that he lives, and that one day he will come, like another Redeemer, to deliver his country from the thrall of Spain.” “Then... then...” Wistfully, he smiled. “A people will always believe what it wishes to believe.” “But you, yourself?” she pressed him. He did not answer her at once. The cloud of thought deepened on his ascetic face. He half turned from her—they were standing in the shadow of the fretted cloisters—and his pensive eyes roamed over the wide quadrangle that was at once the convent garden and burial ground. Out there in the sunshine amid the hum of invisible but ubiquitously pulsating life, three nuns, young and vigorous, their arms bared to the elbows, the skirts of their black habits shortened by a cincture of rope, revealing feet roughly shod in wood, were at work with spade and mattock, digging their own graves in memento mori. Amid the shadows of the cloisters, within sight but beyond earshot, hovered Dona Maria de Grado and Dona Luiza Nieto, the two nobly-born nuns appointed by King Philip to an office as nearly akin to that of ladies-in-waiting as claustral conditions would permit. At length Frey Miguel seemed to resolve himself. “Since you ask me, why should I not tell you? When I was on my way to preach the funeral oration in the Cathedral at Lisbon, as befitted one who had been Don Sebastian’s preacher, I was warned by a person of eminence to have a care of what I said of Don Sebastian, for not only was he alive, but he would be secretly present at the Requiem.” He met her dilating glance, noted the quivering of her parted lips. “But that,” he added, “was fifteen years ago, and since then I have had no sign. At first I thought it possible... there was a story afloat that might have been true... But fifteen years!” He sighed, and shook his head. “What... what was the story?” She was trembling from head to foot. “On the night after the battle three horsemen rode up to the gates of the fortified coast-town of Arzilla. When the timid guard refused to open to them, they announced that one of them was King Sebastian, and so won admittance. One of the three was wrapped in a cloak, his face concealed, and his two companions were observed to show him the deference due to royalty.” “Why, then...” she was beginning. “Ah, but afterwards,” he interrupted her, “afterwards, when all Portugal was thrown into commotion by that tale, it was denied that King Sebastian had been among these horsemen. It was affirmed to have been no more than a ruse of those men’s to gain the shelter of the city.”