He is desired to say when precisely was this; but all that he can answer is that he thinks it was in Lent, just before Easter, three or four years ago. They ask whether he had heard any rumours of the loss of a child at about that time in that district, and he says that he heard rumours of a child lost in Lillo and another in La Guardia; the latter had gone to a vineyard with his uncle, and had never been seen again. But he adds that, in any case, the Francos came and went between La Guardia and Murcia, and that on one of their journeys they might easily have found a child and carried it off, because they had sardine barrels in their carts, and some of those would be empty--by which he means that they could have concealed the child in one of these barrels. Urged to give still further details, he protests that he can remember no more at present, but promises to inform the court if he does succeed in recalling anything else. He is dismissed upon that with an injunction from Dr. Villada--which may have been backed by a promise or a threat--to reflect and to confess all that he knows to be the business of the Holy Office concerning himself or any others. CHAPTER XXII THE TRIAL OF YUCÉ FRANCO (_Continued_) It is not difficult to conjecture with what fresh energies the court--armed with such information as it now possessed--proceeded to re-examine the other seven prisoners accused of complicity in the crime of La Guardia, pressing each with the particular share he was himself alleged to have borne in the affair, and continuing to play off one accused against another. It is regrettable that the records of these proceedings should not at present be available, so that all conjecture might be dispensed with in reconstructing step by step this extraordinary case. And it is to be hoped that M. Fidel Fita’s expectations that these records will ultimately be brought to light may come to be realized. * * * * * A week later, on July 28, Yucé is again brought into the audience-chamber for further examination. But he has nothing more to add on the subject of the actual crime. All that he has contrived to remember in the interval are scraps of conversation that took place when the culprits assembled--on that later occasion--for the purpose of sending the consecrated wafer to Abenamias. Nevertheless, what he says is, from the point of view of the inquisitors, as damaging to those who uttered the things which he repeats as their actual participation in the crucifixion of the boy, and it is hardly less damaging to Yucé himself, since it shows him to have been a _fautor_, or abettor of heretics--a circumstance which he may very well entirely have failed to appreciate.