BOOK IV

THE AZULEJOS

I

Until one o'clock in the morning Antonio and José sat in council. But their session was barren.

Who was up at the guest-house? Could it be the Viscount de Ponte Quebrada, resuming his search for the buried pictures and chalices? They thought not. The Viscount had become a considerable personage, and could not afford to run such risks. Or was it the Viscount's old accomplice, the Captain? Perhaps. The Captain had little to lose. But no: it could not be he. A thief would never have proclaimed his presence by setting lights in front windows.

For a minute or two Antonio indulged a hope that the visitor was merely his old adversary, the official of the Fazenda at Villa Branca. But José shook his head, and said that such a guess was too good to be true. He went on to avow a presentiment that the abbey had been sold. Antonio could not contradict him, and the two men sat silent for a long time.

"Come and speak to me at dawn," said the monk, going at last to the hearthside and lighting José's lantern. "Perhaps it will be best for one of us to march up boldly to the guest-house. As the nearest neighbors we can easily make some excuse."

José shook his head again and departed without a word.

Soon after daybreak they met in the garden, and the master confessed that his man was right. God only knew what high strategy and petty tactics they might have to employ in their defense of His house; and it would be the worst policy to thrust themselves into notice.

The autumn sun was rising behind the abbey hill. Pearly mists hid everything. But, as the glorious orb ascended, the tides of vapor began to ebb. Here and there the tops of the higher pines showed themselves above the drifting mists, like masts and shrouds of ships wrecked in milky shallows. A minute later the chapel and the monastery buildings appeared, huge and vague as an enchanter's palace suddenly exhaled from twilight seas of foam.

As the outlines sharpened, Antonio recalled his vigil on the moonlit night of his return. He remembered the fear which preceded it--the sickening fear that he might be too late. But he remembered also how he had finally trusted in God to guard His own.

"Come, José," he said. "You have done your share and I have tried to do mine. Our Lord will do His. It is time for prayers."

He led the way to the narrow room which served them as oratory, and drew back a curtain from a picture of Our Lady of Perpetual Succor. José's education had advanced so far that he was able to recite Terce in Latin. They sat down facing one another, on benches which José had carved like stalls, and began the Hour. At the psalm _Levavi oculos_, peace and strength entered their souls.

"I have lifted up my eyes unto the hills, from whence my help shall come," said Antonio.

"My help is from the Lord, who made heaven and earth," responded José slowly and attentively.

Their faith waxed stronger as the psalm proceeded. "Behold, He that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep," said José; and Antonio answered: "The Lord is thy keeper: the Lord is thy defense upon thy right hand." José said: "The sun shall not burn thee by day, nor the moon by night." Antonio said: "The Lord keepeth thee from all evil." José said: "May the Lord keep thy coming in and thy going out, from this time forth and for ever." And by way of Amen, Antonio put his whole soul into the appointed _Gloria Patri_, and into the first words of the following psalm _Laetatus sum_, "I was glad."

They parted at the oratory door, and consumed separately their first breakfast, which consisted of rye bread and of a so-called coffee made from roasted grain and the roots of dandelion. Before six José was at work removing gorgeously discolored leaves from a pergola, while Antonio planted some vines which had come to him from Sexard in Hungary. As they moved about they could plainly see the buildings and out-buildings of the abbey; for the mists had drifted away. But no smoke rose from the guest-house chimney, and the place gave no sign of life.

At half-past ten, when José was in the kitchen preparing almoco, or second breakfast, Antonio heard a dull muttering of hoofs on the sandy road. He dropped his tools and began running like a hare up the ravine, so as to get a view of the horseman from behind a boulder. Ducking his head and shoulders he kept himself out of sight.

The noise of the horse's feet stopped. Antonio was startled. He raised his head and saw a mounted man stooping from the saddle, and fumbling with the latch of the farm gate. While he remained in this position it was impossible to make out his age, or class, or nationality. The monk, however, did not wait. He turned and raced back to warn José. But, before he could reach the kitchen door, the horseman came cantering down the slope.

He sat his bay horse rather stiffly and in an un-Portuguese style. His clothes looked English. As he drew near, Antonio saw that he was young and blonde. The monk had a feeling that he and this stranger had met before.

It was young Crowberry.

When he recognized Antonio a flash of joy lit up the youth's pale blue eyes. But, instead of greeting his old cicerone simply and straightforwardly, he jumped down from his horse and began to declaim some prepared rigmarole.

"Zounds! By'r Lady!" he cried, "whom have we here? Marry, by my halidom, I trow it is the goodly knight Oliveira da Rocha himself."

"Why not speak English?" asked Antonio, wringing the young man's hand.

"English?" he retorted. "If you're disrespectful, Senhor da Rocha, I'll begin speaking Portuguese."

"_Pode_," said the monk. Which meant "he may."

Young Crowberry fumbled in his pockets and fished up a manuscript phrase-book which had been compiled for him, he pretended, by some pitiful friend in Oporto. After turning the pages this way and that, he asked:

"_Está prompto o almoço?_" Young Crowberry meant "Is breakfast ready?"

"Not quite," said Antonio.

"_O que tem Fossa Mercê_: What has your Worship got?"

"Brown bread, green figs, white cheese, purple grapes, red wine, and black coffee."

"_De-me alguma bebida_: Give me something to drink."

"I don't understand," said Antonio, shaking his head.

José, hearing voices, thrust his shaggy face through the window and glared at young Crowberry, with his mouth almost as wide open as his eyes.

"This," said Antonio, "is José Ribeiro, the _régisseur_ of the Château da Rocha. He knows more about sea-sand wine than any other man north of Collares." And, turning to José, he explained in Portuguese: "You have heard me speak of the English Senhor Crowberry. This is his son. Go and kill a chicken--the fat brown one."

When José had departed on his murderous errand, Antonio brought their guest a large glass of green wine. Young Crowberry drank it with a wry face; but he admitted that it acted like a charm in quenching his thirst. They walked out into the vineyards.

"And now, Senhor Eduardo, explain yourself," demanded the monk.

"I came on ahead--last night," said Senhor Eduardo.

"Ahead of whom?"

"Of the others."

By this time Antonio was getting irritated by young Crowberry's tiresome smartness; and he was on the point of asking him, rather sharply, not to be a young ass. But he restrained himself and waited. At last young Crowberry said:

"They are in Coimbra. Dirty hole. They're following next week. I came on ahead to chase out the rats and beetles."

"We saw a light last night in the guest-house window," said Antonio. "Do you mean to tell me you opened the place in the dark, and slept there by yourself?"

"Certainly. What of it?"

"Simply this. My dear Eduardo, you are not half such a muff as you try to look, and not one tenth such a ne'er-do-well. But about these 'others.' Who are they? Why are they coming here? How long will they stay?"

"Firstly," replied Edward Crowberry, "there's the guv'nor. Secondly and thirdly, there's Sir Percy and his daughter. Fourthly, there's Mrs. Baxter. Fifthly and sixthly and all-the-restly, there's the servants."

"Who are Sir Percy and his daughter? And who is Mrs. Baxter?"

"Sir Percy is Sir Percival Lannion Kaye-Templeman. His daughter is named Isabel. Lady Kaye-Templeman died before I was born. That's why there's a Mrs. Baxter. She's called Isabel's governess; but it's Isabel who does the governing."

"Why are they coming here?"

"The devil only knows. I'm sure they don't."

Antonio stopped dead.

"Master Edward," he said, "if you're wanting to be a wit or a rattle you shall practice on me at breakfast. But not now; not here. Why are these English people coming here with your father?"

"What's the use of asking me?" demanded young Crowberry, somewhat injured. "It's a complicated business, and I haven't brains enough to puzzle it out."

"Then use such brains as you've got. Have they bought the abbey, or taken it on lease, or what?"

"Something of that sort," pouted the young man. "The guv'nor will explain. I tell you I don't understand it."

A jangling bell announced that breakfast was ready. Young Crowberry threw up his hat and shouted for joy.

José's fat brown chicken did not remind the guest of a Surrey capon. But as his teeth were good and his appetite still better, he devoured two-thirds of it with relish, and had still enough hunger left for the fruit and bread and cheese. During the meal he consumed a whole bottle of wine and, to finish off, he drank a large cup of corn-and-dandelion coffee, as well as two little glasses of Antonio's orange brandy. Then he lit one of his own cigars. Antonio excused himself from smoking.

Soothed and warmed by these good things, young Crowberry gradually became a reasonable human being. He began to talk naturally, and the monk was rejoiced to see that he was vastly improved. It turned out that he had gone back home after only eight months in Oporto, and that he had thrown up the wine-trade in favor of civil engineering. He told Antonio about the railway mania in England, and nearly all his talk was of cuttings, viaducts, and tunnels. Only with difficulty was he led back to the abbey.

"All I know is this," he said at last. "You wrote to the pater about raising a thousand or two and buying the place yourself, didn't you? Well, the old man'd have done it like a shot, only he was putting his last shilling into the Sheffield and Birmingham Railway. I expect he'll lose it all in the long run. But he wanted to find you the money. So he's made some kind of a bargain with Sir Percy. They've been jabbering and scribbling over it for a year. Sir Percy's supposed to have bought the abbey from the Portuguese Government. Don't ask me how he's managed it. I always thought he was so hard up he couldn't buy a penny bun."

The monk's heart beat fast.

"But if this Sir Percy has bought it," he asked, trying to conceal his intense anxiety, "what good is it to me?"

"Any amount," said young Crowberry. "You don't want a lot of tumbling-down cells and chapels and cloisters; you only want vineyards. As for Sir Percy, he does not want to be bothered with vineyards; he only wants a nice place. So you're to be offered a perpetual lease of the vines. No, not perpetual. Only nine hundred and ninety-nine years. So don't waste any time."

The room, with its odors of food and wine and tobacco, suddenly seemed to stifle Antonio. He felt faint and sick. Under the coarse tablecloth his two hands were so tightly clenched that the nails cut his flesh.

At first he blamed his own stark folly in writing to Mr. Crowberry. But he quickly remembered how long had been his deliberation and how many his prayers before writing the letter. Indeed, he had not posted it until, as he believed, the voice of the Holy Ghost said "Yea." For a few moments Satan entered into the monk's heart. So this was God's way of keeping faith with His champions! Seven years, seven hungry, lonely, loveless years of unceasing toil ... and for what? For this: that the holy house of God and the venerated home of Antonio and his brethren should become "a nice place" for the spendthrift heretic.

Into the ears of the monk's soul the arch-tempter breathed his poison. "If you had known last night, under the moon, what you know this morning," he whispered, "you would not have let Margaridinha's bowl smash into atoms. Poor Margaridinha! First you broke the bowl, and now you are breaking her heart. She has sobbed all night, for your sake. But it is not too late. Go back to Senhor Jorge. Say to him--"

Antonio sprang up and strode to the open door.

"The devil," said young Crowberry.

"Yes. The devil!" cried Antonio, turning upon him with a terrible look.

But the promise of Terce was suddenly fulfilled: _Dominus custodit te ab omni malo_. Without the smallest anti-devilish volition on Antonio's part, without one _Retro me, Satana_, without one syllable of prayer, without one crossing of his breast, the tempter vanished back like a spent flash of lightning into the dark. Nor did he flee leaving behind him a void. It seemed that in his unholy footprints stood a strong angel of consolation. Antonio's faith returned with three-fold force. Once more he knew that God would do His part, and that these new happenings were parts of His design. Perhaps He was about to draw Antonio and José along mysterious ways. Perhaps it was His will that they must press with torn raiment and bleeding feet through many a thorn-brake and over leagues of sharp-edged, burning stones. But it was to victory and triumph, not to defeat and shame that the path ran.

When the monk, with inarticulate apologies, resumed his place at the table, the terrible look in his eyes had given place to radiant happiness.

"That's right," said young Crowberry. "I was getting frightened. I was beginning to remember a story I read years and years and years ago, when I was only a young fellow, like yourself. It was something about a man falling down dead, because somebody had broken good news to him too suddenly."

II

Before young Crowberry set out on his return to Coimbra, he deigned to say a little more about his movements and his party. It appeared that he could speak Portuguese fairly well, and that he had traveled all the way from Oporto to the abbey in an English-built dogcart drawn by an English-bred horse. After depositing his heavier luggage in a bedroom at the guest-house and spending one night there, he had left the dogcart in the stables, and was returning on horseback, with nothing but saddle-bags, a heavy-handled whip, and a pistol.

The monk asked twice for some account of Sir Percy Kaye-Templeman. His first application drew forth the answer that there were many better fellows; his second that there were many worse. Concerning Sir Percy's daughter, young Crowberry was voluble: but very little information could be extracted from his discourse, which was almost entirely to the effect that young Crowberry would give his hat (or, at successive repetitions, his ears, or his horse, or tuppence, or the whole world, or his boots, or his soul, or his dinner, or a million pounds) to know what Senhor da Rocha thought of her.

It was of Mrs. Baxter that the young man spoke with most clearness. He persisted in never naming her without the prefix "That Excellent Creature."

"That Excellent Creature, Mrs. Baxter," he said, "gave me solemn instructions to see that large fires were kept blazing in all the bedrooms for a whole day. Now, except in the kitchen, there isn't a single fireplace or chimney. So I smoked all over the place instead."

Antonio did not suffer his visitor to depart without a message to Mr. Crowberry, senior. He sent word that he sought the honor of providing a simple dinner for Mr. Crowberry and his friends on the day of their arrival. With regret he added a request that each one of the party would bring his own napkin, knife, fork, and spoon. He concluded by offering his friendly and neighborly services in general.

José agreed to walk a couple of leagues at the bay horse's side, so as to show young Crowberry a bridle-path which would save him three hours in the saddle. They left at one o'clock.

As soon as horse and men were out of sight, Antonio hurried up the hill and made his way into the abbey. It was his hope and prayer that Sir Percival would be restrained by lack of cash from interfering with the monastery and that he would live quietly and cheaply in the more modern and airy little guest-house. But the monk knew that the sacred pile was menaced by a thousand perils; and therefore he spent nearly an hour in wandering from kitchen to refectory, from library to calefactory, from cell to cell, from cloister to chapel. Perhaps he was near the last time. With burning earnestness he recited Vespers in his old stall.

Rising from his knees, Antonio paid a visit to a useless-looking door in the outer wall of the cloisters. Like all the other doors of the building, it was so well plastered over with official seals on the outer side that José and Antonio had never dared to use it. Yet Antonio knew its secret well. A massy bolt appeared to secure it, like the gate of a castle; but there was a tiny green-painted stud of iron hidden in the masonry outside which controlled the whole. By pressing the stud, the staple on the door-jamb moved slightly, leaving the bolt free. This clever and simple mechanism was due to an English Benedictine, who had fled to Portugal just after the martyrdom of the Abbot of Reading, under Henry the Eighth. Antonio examined it, and found it in good order.

He and José reached home almost at the same moment. The man would have returned to his work without a word had not the master stopped him.

"These English people, who are arriving next week," said Antonio, "may become, in the long run, our worst enemies. But they think they are our friends. They mean well. We will do our whole duty to them as neighbors."

José said nothing.

"It is my prayer," added Antonio, "that they will lock up the monastery and be satisfied with the guest-house. For some things, I wish ... I hope ... I should like them to hear ... I mean, José, I should like some one in the village to tell young Mr. Crowberry your ghost-tale about the monk."

"He knows it already, your Worship," said José stolidly.

"Knows it already? Who told him?"

"I did, your Worship."

Antonio could have wrung José's hand. But the shaggy fellow had a little more to tell.

"They come on Tuesday," he said slowly. "The young Senhor Crôbri says he is going to sit up in the chapel on Wednesday night. But he won't see anything; because I know that next Wednesday the monk won't be there. The young Senhor is going back to England, starting on Thursday. After that, the monk can do as he likes. The senhoras will be so frightened at the young Senhor's tale that they won't go near the abbey. As it's nearly winter, perhaps they'll soon be afraid of the guest-house too. Ghosts might begin appearing up there, as well, before long. You never know."

"Come," said Antonio, after he had done marveling. "We are both tired. We had a late night and an early morning, and we've walked a long way. The young Senhor ate both wings of the brown chicken and all the breast. But there are the two legs left. And, for once, we will open a bottle of our good wine."

On the Sunday afternoon, at an earlier hour than usual, José and Antonio went up to the abbey. They oiled the secret levers which controlled the bolt in the cloisters, and replaced on the shelves of the library a few pious books which they had borrowed. Afterwards, sitting in opposite stalls of the choir, they sang Vespers and Compline. It was safe to sing, for once; because the feast of Saint Iria had drawn the whole able-bodied population of the parish to the village of Santa Iria do Rio, nearly three leagues away. In hushed voices they sang all the psalms to the proper tones; also the two hymns and the Magnificat. The sun shone warmly through the western window while they were singing: but the chapel was growing dim when they arose at the end of their silent prayers.

On the Monday little was done outside elaborate preparations for the morrow's dinner. Nearly all José's heirlooms rose again from their carven sarcophagi. His six solid silver spoons, his solid silver ladle, and his china bowl with dark green leaves on a light green ground cried aloud for a worthy soup; and accordingly much time had to be spent in preparing a cream of cauliflowers. Meanwhile, a fowl, two partridges, and the prime parts of a kidling were gently cooking in a giant casserole, along with four or five handsful of vegetables and herbs.

On the Tuesday, between eleven and twelve, when Antonio was upstairs shaking out his fine suit of English clothes, an ill-blown coach-horn blared out a wanton greeting. The monk leaped to his tiny window. An imposing procession was jolting along the narrow road. Antonio's keen eyes could make out almost everything, although the road was over a furlong away.

At the head of the file rode young Crowberry on his bay. With one hand he was holding a short horn to his mouth, while with the other he bunched up the reins and strove to caracole his deeply scandalized steed. Next rolled an open chariot, containing two quietly dressed ladies and Mr. Crowberry, _père_. This was followed by a hired carriage, of Portuguese build, wherein sat a tall, straight, military-looking Englishman and the official of the Fazenda, from Villa Branca. A smaller hired carriage held one of the Fazenda clerks and a Villa Branca notary. Two closed coaches, looking like superannuated diligences, brought up the rear. Antonio guessed that these crazy and stuffy vehicles were carrying the Englishman's servants and personal luggage.

The procession crawled up a slope, and disappeared in the dip of the hills. But five minutes later, while he was cutting an armful of flowers for the dinner-table, the monk saw it mount again on its way to the abbey. About noon he distinctly heard, through the still air, the big gate screaming on its rusty hinges. It reminded him of the exceeding bitter cry with which that same gate had cried out when Saint Benedict's sons went forth from their ancient seat.

Antonio could picture the successive scenes. He could almost see Mrs. Baxter, young Crowberry's Excellent Creature, throwing up horrified hands at the comfortlessness of the guest-house, although Father Sebastian had been wont to grieve over its almost sinful luxury. He could imagine the Fazenda dignitary pompously breaking the seals, and calling upon all to witness the close of his impeccable stewardship. He could almost hear young Crowberry quipping and quirking about everything. But this last thought was too much for Antonio. It suddenly sharpened, almost to a poignant certainty, his fear lest irreverent feet should profane the holy place, and lest sacrilegious hands should be laid upon the Ark of the Lord.

Mr. Crowberry and the others were to arrive at half-past three and to dine at four, so that they could regain the guest-house before dusk. It was therefore with dismay, that Antonio heard horses and wheels on the road just as José's clock was striking three. He sprang up the stairs two at a time, and changed his clothes with both haste and speed. When, however, he descended to the ground-floor, it was not Mr. Crowberry's voice which met his ears.

The monk's visitors were the Villa Branca notary and the official of the Fazenda. They had left their carriage and the clerk waiting on the road. The notary said little: but the great man from the Fazenda was fulsomely wordy. Up at the abbey Mr. Crowberry had more than confirmed in his hearing nearly all the local rumors concerning Antonio's cleverness and prosperity, and he deemed it prudent to pay so considerable a personage his respects.

There was coldness in the monk's tone as he prayed his old scorner to be seated; for he could not forget that, after his ten-league journey to Villa Branca, he himself had been kept standing. But, as policy required that he should stand well with the henchman of the Government, he concealed most of his disgust. To think of this pilfering bully sitting familiarly at his table went against Antonio's grain; but, when he found that both the notary and the official had heard of the impending dinner, he went so far as to suggest that they should remain. Happily, however, the shortness of the days made it necessary that the pair should at once resume their long journey. They drained two cups of wine, flourished a few parting compliments, and hurried away.

Hardly could the monk give a rapid glance at the table and a final order to José before young Crowberry was upon him, plunging from one room to another and back again, like a dog just off the leash. He poked his nose into everything, and kept on rattling out a thousand criticisms and witticisms.

"Mind you count these, later on," he chattered, as he weighed two silver spoons in his two hands. "If you find one missing, go through the pockets of that Excellent Creature, Mrs. Baxter. What's this? That beastly green wine? Pour it down the sink. And, look here, I say, mind you, da Rocha: don't forget to remember what I said about Isabel Kaye-Templeman. Where did you get this cloth? By the way, Sir Percy isn't such a bad old sort, after all. Have you got any more of that orange brandy? I'll have mine in this."

He rang his knuckles against José's great green bowl. Then his quick eye noticed that the best chair in the house was at the right of the table-head.

"H'llo!" he said, "Isabel on your right? Of course. Couldn't be anywhere else. Now mind: you've got to tell me what you think of her--just what you really and truly and honestly think. Where are you putting the Excellent Creature?"

"At the foot," said Antonio. "Between your excellent self and your excellent father. On your left you'll have the excellent Isabel. On my left I shall have the excellent Sir Percival."

"Then Heaven help you," said young Crowberry. "Still, you'll have Isabel on your right. And be sure to remember--"

III

Antonio hurried to the door. His guests, with the exception of Mrs. Baxter, who was following in the chariot with a hamper of silver and linen, had reached the little white gate of the garden. Mr. Crowberry rushed in first.

"Good, good, good," he cried, wringing the monk's hand up and down. Antonio noticed with pleasure that his old employer now treated him as a social equal; but it pleased him more and touched him deeply to find that Mr. Crowberry was overflowing with honest delight at his reunion with a friend.

Before he could reply he was being presented to Sir Percival. Sir Percival submitted to the ceremony inattentively. Nine-tenths of his wits were evidently engaged with something or somebody else. He was a tall, thin, straight, soldierly man, whose scanty gray hair and disproportionately luxuriant mustache made his head look too small and bird-like. His cheeks were a trifle red, his gray eyes bright and restless. As soon as one quick glance had assured him that Antonio did not mean to do him any harm, he seemed to lose interest in his host and in his surroundings.

With Sir Percival's daughter the case was different. Antonio instantly became conscious that, after four years of isolation, he was standing once more face to face with a being of his own kind. He felt, vaguely, that this being was tall, graceful, feminine, proud, fine; but it did not occur to him to take stock of her features, or dress, or complexion. Until later in the afternoon, he could not have told young Crowberry the color of her eyes, or whether she was dark or fair.

This had always been Antonio's way in the presence of a woman. When she happened to be handsome, he felt unerringly and immediately her grace and beauty; yet his first, involuntary, eager search was for her spirit, for the inner self which might perchance be peeping out from the depths of her eyes. His own eyes, dark and soft as brown velvet, could be in the same moment both masterful and tender. While he was still a boy, a wise old woman had said of him: "May God put it into his head to turn monk, for he has eyes to break hearts." Not that Antonio was ever aware of looking at a woman otherwise than at a man. The habit was unconscious; but, for all the purity and austerity of his heart and life, it was there. It was not a fault. One might as well have blamed him for his black hair or for his tallness.

Fifty times in the past Antonio's glance had flashed forth to probe fifty pairs of eyes. Black eyes, blue eyes, hazel eyes, gray eyes, brown eyes--he had glanced into them all. Very often this swift glance had encountered maiden shyness and confusion; very seldom it had struck against brazen immodesty, like a sword against a shield. Once it had met a devil, a devil from hell, all the uglier because of the possessed woman's sweet pink cheeks and gold-crowned white brow. Twice or thrice it had peered into bottomless lakes of pity; and twenty times it had surprised a craving for human kindness, a hunger and thirst for Antonio's or some other love. But, when Mr. Crowberry began reciting his formula of introduction, the monk's keen glance met something it had never met before.

What his glance met was a glance more searching than his own; a still swifter glance which encountered his, like one mailed knight encountering another; a stronger, more impetuous glance which overmastered his and hurled it back. This glance came from beautiful eyes which were neither hard nor cold; but Antonio was too much taken aback to notice their heavenly blue. Unlike his, the lady's glance did not seem to be habitual. It seemed, on the contrary, to be something against the grain of her pride; something peculiar to an abnormal moment of her life. Of this the monk was speedily assured by the slight flush which warmed her cheeks as she turned the blue eyes away.

Mr. Crowberry put an end to the embarrassment. As tumultuously as a cart discharging a thousand of bricks, he expressed, in a single outburst, his joy at seeing Antonio, his detestation of Portugal, his ravenous hunger and raging thirst, and also some sudden animosity against his headlong heir. He wound up by demanding an immediate view of the champagne.

Antonio promised to give Mr. Crowberry satisfaction at a later stage. He explained that the dark and chilly cellar was no place for a lady at any time, and that even Mr. Crowberry could not go in and out of it with impunity during the heat of the afternoon. But the vineyards, he said, could be seen; also the _chais_ or over-ground cellars, the patent wine-plant from Bordeaux, the Irish pot-still for the orange brandy, and some of the casks of Portuguese claret which England might expect to receive in twelve months' time.

At that minute young Crowberry joined them. He was alternately sucking and rubbing one of his fingers which he had just burned while interfering with José in the kitchen. As the others moved off towards the nearer vines the young man detained Antonio and dug mysteriously into the monk's ribs with his unburnt hand.

"What d'ye think of Isabel Kaye-Templeman?" he muttered.

"How do I know? What do you think of yourself?" Antonio retorted. And he hurried after his guests, without waiting for an answer.

Sir Percival allowed his body to be marched round about Antonio's domain and in and out of the chais: but his mind and soul persisted in sticking fast somewhere else. While Antonio was explaining the Bordeaux wine-press, the baronet abruptly whipped out a pocket-book and began scribbling some figures which did not appear to have much connection with wine. Mr. Crowberry was equally trying. He asked Antonio at least forty questions, most of them extremely technical; but he did not listen to more than half a dozen of the monk's answers. As for Isabel, although she accompanied the others in a dutiful manner and listened to all Antonio said, she hardly spoke. Antonio divined what it was that vexed her. At the moment of the introduction she had counted on seeing before she was seen.

The dinner-bell jangled punctually at four o'clock. Mrs. Baxter had arrived, along with a Portuguese servant who was already on good terms with José in the kitchen. The Excellent Creature had brought three knives, three forks, two spoons, and a napkin for each person, as well as eighteen finely-cut wine-glasses. She was a stoutish little person, looking like an old maid of the middle class, but with unmistakable aspirations to the dignity of what she called "a decayed gentlewoman." Young Crowberry presented Antonio to her in a set speech.

"Madam," he said, making a low bow and sweeping the floor with the brim of his hat, "I trust I have your leave to introduce the worthy Senhor Oliveira da Rocha, whose lowly roof you are honoring by your presence. His rugged frame conceals an honest heart; and, while he sets before us our frugal fare, I make bold to hope that the evident sincerity of his welcome will assist you to condone the inevitable defects of his hospitality. Senhor da Rocha, I have the good fortune to make you acquainted with a gracious lady, and one of the chief ornaments of her sex, than whom the world contains no more Excellent Creature, Mrs. Baxter."

Antonio heard the first sentences of this harangue with horror. Such merciless teasing of a woman, a poor woman, a helpless widow, a dependent who could hardly retaliate, stung his ears. But he soon discovered that Mrs. Baxter had not yet found young Crowberry out. She heard him with approval, and received Antonio's greetings in a condescending manner.

When they entered the dining-room the soup was on the table. José's old spoons made so evident an impression on Mrs. Baxter that young Crowberry turned to her and said:

"Madam, it is hoped that we shall see our way to leave at least two of them behind."

Whenever Mrs. Baxter could not understand young Crowberry's remarks she bestowed upon him a beaming smile. Antonio, whose blood had run cold, breathed again as the smile appeared; but he felt some apology was needed for such perilous jesting at his table. In a low voice he said to Isabel, who was on his right:

"As that young man's old tutor, I fear he hardly does me credit."

"As Mrs. Baxter's old pupil," Isabel answered, "I'm sure she doesn't mind."

This time their eyes met more guardedly; but there was still much in the lady's glance which the monk could not fathom. It was as though their acquaintanceship already had a past, and was to have a future; as though they had often sat side by side before, eating and drinking or talking together; as though they were bearing themselves formally before fellow-guests who could not be allowed to suspect their good comradeship; as though they had a thousand confidences whereof to disburden themselves so soon as they should be alone. Not that Antonio made any such complete analysis as this while he was ladling out the soup from the green bowl. He was conscious of little more than a fine pleasure in the presence of this beautiful English girl who was entering so willingly and naturally into his rough life.

Everybody praised the cream of cauliflowers. In default of soup-plates, it was ladled into small round, gaily-painted dishes, about four inches deep. A dozen of them had cost Antonio the equivalent of an English shilling at the fair of Santa Iria a year before. All the dishes differed in pattern and color. Young Crowberry was the first to eat his last spoonful of soup; and, having done so, he discovered at the bottom of his dish a violet leopard, with green spots, climbing a pink tree. He shoved it towards Mrs. Baxter.

"Alas, madam," he said. "The pity of it. How sad that the industrious artist whose work I am contemplating should have lacked those blessings of education which you, ma'am, are so signally qualified to impart! I protest that neither this cærulean quadruped nor the blushing vegetable to whose apex he aspires are to be found figured on any of the numerous pages which the late spendthrift Goldsmith devoted to the description of Animated Nature. I protest--"

So did Crowberry _père_, who had been listening to some eager talk of Sir Percy's. He gave Crowberry _fils_ a kick under the narrow table, and once more lent Sir Percy his right ear.

"Mine," said Isabel to Antonio, "is a blue bird, with an orange-colored tail. I should love to eat soup every night out of this nest of his."

"It is your own," said Antonio. "I will send it up to-morrow."

Not knowing the Portuguese etiquette which prescribed that Antonio should make the offer and that she should decline it, Isabel simply spoke what was in her heart.

"Mine?" she said gratefully. "How good you are! But no. It's old and valuable. I could never think of it."

"Very old," smiled Antonio. "The potter made it last year for the village fair. And very valuable. My man, José, bought twelve of them for a penny each. It is not worth naming."

At the news that she could possess the blue and orange bird without leaving her host more than one penny the worse Isabel was as pleased as a child. Meanwhile, Sir Percy continued his conversation with Mr. Crowberry and ignored his daughter. A Portuguese papa would have kept sharp ears and eyes upon his offspring; but the monk knew too much of English ways to be surprised.

José stamped in with the trout. When he had set them down and there was no further risk of his dropping both fishes and dishes on the stone floor, Antonio disclosed his name, his offices, and his virtues to the company, in English and in Portuguese. José blushed, saluted, and fled.

Within a ten-mile radius of the abbey less than a hundredweight of butter was churned in the whole year. Not an ounce was made by José. As for the olive oil, Antonio distrusted its fineness. Accordingly the trout had been simply steamed. They were served with a sauce made from the yolks of eggs, cream, and the juice of lemons. The host saw with pride that this dish was a success; but Sir Percy cleared his plate without seeming to know whether he was eating a mountain trout or a red herring. At last, when José was taking away the plates, he swung round towards Antonio like a weathercock on a rusty pivot, and said abruptly:

"Senhor Rocha, I hear you know all about alujezos."

"Azulejos," interrupted Mr. Crowberry, correcting him.

"Ajulezos," snapped Sir Percy, without turning his head.

"It's a hard word to pronounce," said Antonio; "and a strange word altogether. As azulejos are little blue-and-white tiles, one would naturally think that it is derived from azul, our Portuguese word for 'blue,' and _ej_, one of our diminutives--a bluelet, a blueling, a little thing of blue. But that's a pure coincidence. The word comes straight from the Arabic."

Sir Percy stared. Antonio thought he was incredulous.

"I mean the word, not the thing," he explained. "The azulejos up at the abbey are not Moorish, of course. They are of the seventeenth century, produced under Dutch influence, but far finer, I think, than any Delft. All the same, we have genuine Moorish azulejos in Portugal; for example, in the Palace at Cintra."

Sir Percy stared harder than ever.

"We'll talk about it later on. Not now. After dinner," said Mr. Crowberry hastily. "Sir Percy, you've not tasted your wine."

The wine-merchant himself had already tasted three glasses. The wine was a white wine, somewhat resembling a very dry sherry, but as refreshing as young Moselle. The two Crowberrys praised its clearness, Isabel admired its color, Mrs. Baxter said it was a little sour, and Sir Percy, having drained his glass at a single gulp, kindly said he would have some more.

The lifting of the great casserole's lid filled the room with fragrant vapors. With this dish José served a salad of bitter oranges and three bottles of the farm's best red wine. Mrs. Baxter said that this wine would be improved by the addition of a little hot water, nutmeg, and honey. Unhappily the Crowberrys, whose hearts were with the ports and fruity Burgundies, also failed to note its subtler beauties. Nevertheless, the older Crowberry drank a whole bottle by himself, and then loudly insisted on trying the new champagne.

"We demand it, dead or alive," said young Crowberry.

The champagne was brought at last. José walked in with it slowly, holding it neck downwards. Antonio rose, took the bottle to the doorway and released the cork. With a cunning movement he reverted the bottle the instant the explosion had disgorged the sediment. When he poured out the liquid, the bubbles danced like diamonds upon amber. It was not very good wine; but the excitements attending it put everybody into a good temper, Sir Percy not excepted.

The remaining delicacies were set on the table all at once. For the ladies Antonio had taken care to provide two dishes of sweets. The first was filled with heart-shaped marmeladas, or quince jellies, firm enough to cut with a knife and not in the least sticky. The second was a custard of goat's milk and eggs, flavored with spices and white wine. There were also six tiny snow-white cheeses, some fine broas, and a pyramid of grandly colored fruits. The coffee, for once, was not grain-and-dandelion, but real Brazilian.

Knowing Mr. Crowberry's weakness, the monk signed to José that he should serve the brandy in small glasses, and that he should not leave the flasks on the table. When the cigar-box went round, Mr. Crowberry did not recognize it as one which Antonio had received in his presence four years before, a thousand miles away. His mind was busy with another thought. Filling up his largest glass with white wine, he rose to his feet, cleared his throat, and said pompously:

"To the Queens of England and Portugal. May their Majesties and their subjects be happy. God save the Queens."

Everybody stood up and drank. José, knowing that some good work was a-doing, saluted. But when the others sat down again, Mr. Crowberry remained standing.

"I haven't done yet," he said. "There's another toast. Ladies and gentlemen, I take leave to propose the health of Senhor Francisco Manoel Oliveira da Rocha. May God forgive him for having such a name. Ladies and gentlemen, he's a jolly good fellow. Personally, I don't like his claret; but, to be candid, I don't like anybody's. I've tasted worse stuff from Bordeaux at half a guinea a bottle."

Young Crowberry applauded noisily. Mrs. Baxter, who had dined well, blinked at the speaker like a sleepy pussy-cat. Sir Percival listened with almost excessive politeness. He had emerged from his abstraction, and was ashamed of his earlier brusqueness. Isabel's gaze was riveted on her painted plate.

"When I reflect," continued Mr. Crowberry, "that Senhor da Rocha has accomplished all this on a few guineas of capital and almost single-handed, I am more than ever proud to be his friend. The weeks I passed with him in England were the pleasantest of my life. Sir Percy ... Ladies ... I congratulate you on your neighbor. He has given us a dinner fit for kings. I say once more, he's a jolly good fellow, and I empty my glass to his lifelong health and happiness."

Young Crowberry, using both hands, rattled the blades of two knives against the rims of two plates, at the same time stamping on the stone floor and yapping out, "Hear, hear!" in a voice like a terrier's bark. The toast was drunk.

Antonio rose to respond. But it was nearly half a minute before he opened his mouth. Mr. Crowberry's unexpected compliment gave him an opportunity for which he was unprepared, and English was not his native tongue. At last he said:

"Mr. Crowberry, ladies and gentlemen. I cannot accept your compliments, for I do not deserve them; but I thank you most heartily for your kind wishes. I thank you, also, for the honor you have done me in coming to this little house. You, sir, have kindly spoken of our picnic as a dinner; but I am under no delusions, and I thank you, most of all, for your leniency towards our roughness and shortcomings."

Mrs. Baxter graciously inclined her head, as if to bestow a plenary indulgence where it was urgently needed; but the others cried, "No! Not at all!"

"And now," Antonio went on, "I have a toast on my own account, though I'm the only one to drink it. I propose the health of my guests. Mr. Crowberry's was the only face I knew when I landed in your beautiful England, and his was the last face I saw when I sailed away. Without his generosity I might not be on this farm to-day. It does me good to see him again. He is--I hope I'm pronouncing the word right--he's a jolligoodfellow."

"And so say I," sang out young Crowberry. "He's a block of the young chip."

"As for Sir Percival Kaye-Templeman and ... and Her Ladyship," added the monk, suddenly becoming hazy as to the status of a baronet's daughter, "I am indeed happy to have such neighbors. We place our services, such as they are, entirely at their Excellencies' disposal; and at Madame Baxter's also. Mr. Crowberry, you are aware, sir, that I used to work in the abbey vineyards, over seven years ago. I knew all the monks. I knew the old Abbot. He was a saint. He died a day or two after they turned him out, at Navares, the little town you passed through this morning. So it is natural I should have a great deal of reverence for the old place. And I am thankful, more thankful than words can express, that it has passed to owners who will not hold so sacred a spot in disrespect. Often and often I have feared for its fate."

An awkward silence followed Antonio's speech. Mr. Crowberry fidgeted in his chair. Isabel colored warmly, and Sir Percy straightened his back more stiffly than ever. Suddenly young Crowberry came to the rescue with a comical wail.

"What about Me?" he asked. "I'm a guest, and you haven't praised Me? Why ain't I a jolligoodfellow, too?"

"You are already jolly and, some day, I hope you will be good," said Antonio, smiling good-humoredly at his pupil. "Ladies and gentlemen, with my whole heart, I drink to you all."

Everybody turned to Sir Percy. He seemed desirous of responding, but something held him down. Young Crowberry sprang into the breach once more.

"Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking," he said, rising, "I will nevertheless, however, try to attempt to endeavor to thank you on behalf of us all. Now for my own toast. The Ladies--God bless 'em. Senhor, I believe you have on your right a Lady Abbess who will give you every satisfaction. If, however, Her Ladyship should fail in anything, you have only to report the matter to Madame Baxter. I drain my glass to the Ladies."

The four men drank. Isabel darted a grateful glance at young Crowberry, as if to thank him for delivering her from a painful situation; but he did not see it. Mrs. Baxter sat up, gasped, blushed, and managed to say:

"I am sure, Mr. Edward, we are very much obliged."

"Last not least, here's to José, the cook," cried young Crowberry, and, raising his voice, he called through the door in Portuguese: "Hola, José, how the devil are we to drink your health when there isn't any more wine?"

After José had been toasted and had saluted in response, Antonio suggested that he had detained his visitors too long, and that they were doubtless wishing to see more of their new home before dark. Sir Percy seemed grateful. Pulling himself together, he acknowledged the monk's hospitality with almost excessive earnestness, and pressed him to come often to the abbey. They walked together to the road.

"And I am truly to have the blue-and-orange bird?" said Isabel. "You're sure you won't miss him very much?"

"Not a bit," said Antonio. "I know he will have a good home."

He stood watching the chariot as it rolled away. At the bend of the road she turned and waved her hand.

IV

The wine-merchant and his son did not drive home with Sir Percy and the ladies. They preferred to walk.

"Now then," demanded Crowberry _fils_, pouncing upon Antonio as he returned from the gate. "Out with it. What do you think of Isabel?"

But Crowberry _père_, following hard on his heels, swiftly sent the youth about his business. He wanted ten minutes' talk, he said, with Antonio alone.

"Da Rocha," he began, as they paced the shady length of the chief pergola; "believe me, it was one of the greatest disappointments of my life when I could not lend you the two thousand pounds you wrote for. If I'd only had sense enough to stick to wine, you could have had the money twice over in a jiffy. But I'm up to the ears in these damned railways; and Heaven only knows what will be the end."

"A big profit, I hope," said the monk.

"More likely a big smash. But leave all that. It's too late to alter it. Now, about these abbey vineyards. It struck me that I might get somebody to buy the buildings and to lease you the vineyards on easy terms. The only man I could think of was Sir Percy. I knew he was finding England a bit uncomfortable. You see, he's gone through nearly all his money."

"How? Gambling? Drinking? Or what?"

"Worse. Inventions. He worshiped his young wife. She died suddenly, and I think it turned him a bit mad. Anyhow, he's gone through two fortunes. All spent on experiments and patents. He has invented dozens of things people don't want. Ten thousand pounds went over a balloon with wings and a rudder. He has perfected a substitute for indigo; but it costs twice as much as the genuine article. I believe his new way of boring cannons has been taken up by the Government; but an artillery colonel stole the idea and collared all the profits. I don't doubt Sir Percy has invented a thing or two this very day, at your table."

"You say he has spent all his money," objected Antonio. "If so, how could he buy the abbey?"

"Wait," said Mr. Crowberry. "Men like Sir Percy can't get down to their last penny as easily as you or I. Sir Percy's is an old family--older than any of our dukes, save one. Families like those are all spread out, through intermarriage. There's always some aunt or cousin, when it comes to the worst, who will send you five hundred pounds and a nasty letter. In this case, Sir Percy got the five hundred near home. It was his daughter Isabel's. She has a separate estate that can't be pawned. This five hundred came out of income."

"But the price of the abbey was three thousand pounds."

"Don't interrupt. It was three thousand guineas. That is, three thousand pounds for the Lisbon Government and three hundred for the Fazenda official. Two thousand eight hundred remain to be paid."

Antonio's heart brimmed with wrath and shame and bitterness.

"I couldn't have managed it but for an amazing stroke of luck," Mr. Crowberry continued. "Over these damned railways, I got mixed up with a sort of broker who knew all about Portugal. I don't like him; but he's a mighty clever fellow. Perhaps you know him. He got a peerage from your Government for lending them money at forty per cent. He's the Viscount de Ponte Quebrada."

Antonio succeeded in remaining silent.

"Strangely enough, he knew this very abbey. It was the week after I had your letter. I told him that a friend of mine wanted to buy the vineyards; and he recognized the name of the place at once. I tried to get him to lend you two thousand on it; but he wouldn't do it to a stranger. Then I asked him to lend it to Sir Percy; and he seemed quite struck with the idea.

"That very night he went and saw Sir Percy on his own account, and they made some sort of three-cornered bargain. The Viscount has squared the Fazenda, and he's given Sir Percy introductions for getting a railway concession--Lisbon to Oporto--worth millions! I suspect the Viscount will get the millions, and Sir Percy will be the figure-head. As for the two thousand eight hundred, they've to pay three hundred on New Year's Day, and the balance in five half-yearly instalments."

"Who will pay? The Viscount? Or the daughter Isabel?"

"Keep quiet. It seems the Viscount told Sir Percy, on the quiet, that there are several jobs about this abbey which they can work together. He mentioned one. These al--I mean, azulejos. Sir Percy has invented a way of getting them down."

Antonio's heart almost stood still.

"They can't, they daren't," he cried at last. "Till the abbey is wholly paid for, how dare they?"

"Who's to object? Hasn't the Fazenda man got three hundred, all for himself? Isn't he going to do anything to earn the money? Da Rocha, I always said you were not a man of the world. They dare, they can, and they will rip down those damned old tiles. And when they've got them down here they're going to get them down in other places--other old convents. The Viscount can get six hundred pounds a set. They're wanted for museums and galleries."

"He can get at least a thousand," cried Antonio.

"So much the better for Sir Percy and the Viscount. That's how the twenty-eight hundred is to be paid. It'll be all right. Now, about your lease of the vineyards."

"Mr. Crowberry," said Antonio, halting and looking with a white face at his friend. "Don't think me ungrateful. But this hurts me to the quick. What if the monks should return to buy back their own? Nay, less. What if one of them should merely revisit it? Those azulejos were their chief pride. What will they say when they know that this, in a sense, is my doing; that it wouldn't have happened if I had never written to you for money?"

"Who's going to tell 'em?" demanded the other, vexed. "If you don't, nobody else will."

"Whether they ever know it or not," said Antonio, "I tell you I'd rather you should pluck out one of my eyes than tear down those azulejos."

"Then you deserve to have been born one-eyed," retorted Mr. Crowberry, thoroughly aroused. "I never heard such tomfoolery in my life. This is what I get for trying to do you a good turn. Gad! As if you didn't put enough of a wet blanket on us all when you proposed our healths! I'll tell you what it is. There's too much damnable gush in this hole of a Portugal, and that's why you're all beggars."

Antonio was about to reply hotly; but the wine-merchant stopped him.

"No," he said, "I take that back. We won't quarrel. But you've upset me badly. I go away on Thursday or Friday. We've only one clear day to fix this lease. Don't be a fool."

"If the azulejos cannot be spared," replied Antonio, terribly agitated, "I cannot become Sir Percy's tenant."

"But, my ridiculous friend, look here. Sir Percy doesn't want a tenant--neither you nor anybody else. He's leasing you the vineyards to oblige me. D'ye expect me to go and make conditions when he's doing you a favor?"

Antonio began pacing up and down, with bent head and hands clasped behind his back. He strode, six steps this way and six steps back, over and over again, with a feverish tread, like an animal in a cage. After a full minute he threw up his head, and said:

"Do me one more kindness. Give me till to-morrow. In the afternoon I will come to the guest-house, to bring a little bowl for Miss Kaye-Templeman. Till then, I beg that you will not say a word of this to anyone?"

Waving down Mr. Crowberry's wrath with an imperious hand, he plunged under the orange trees. The Englishman took a couple of steps after him; then he shrugged his shoulders and strolled back to the house.

"What do you really and truly think of Isabel?" asked young Crowberry, who had headed Antonio off among the trees. This time he meant to have his answer.

The monk looked at him sadly, and passed a hand over his burning eyes.

"The Senhorita and I talked very little," he replied. "So far as I know, I like her."

"Is she pretty?"

"Yes."

"And clever?"

"I think so."

"She's as clever as a don. That's the trouble. All head, no heart. And as proud as Lucifer."

Young Crowberry saw that Antonio could hardly endure his chatter.

"Something's wrong," he said, with genuine concern in his boyish voice. "What are you down in the doleful dumps for?"

At first Antonio shook his head. But the youth's frank distress touched him. The trouble was too great to be confined within one breast; so he detailed Sir Percy's plan. When he had finished he added:

"But why should I worry you with all this? You are young, you are buoyant. You have been brought up amidst different religious ideas. This is a matter you cannot understand."

Young Crowberry gripped the monk's fore-arm with a quick, fierce grip. As he let it drop, he retorted intensely:

"Senhor da Rocha, as you say, I am young. But even I have learned one thing that you haven't. There is not always a merry heart under a cap and bells. My jabber is flippant, no doubt. But ... but God knows how much I care for the things you say I can't understand."

Antonio was startled clean out of his trouble.

"You don't mean to tell me, Edward," he said, "that you have begun to care about religion--to care deeply with all your heart?"

The youth bowed his head.

"Tell me how much you mean," Antonio demanded eagerly.

But Mr. Crowberry appeared in the doorway of the house and stepped out to join them. His son saw him, and said hurriedly in Antonio's ear:

"We leave on Thursday. I want a talk--a long one, a quiet one. Your man José told me a tale about a ghost in the chapel. I said I would watch there to-morrow night. I can get the key. Say that you will join me. But not a word to anybody."

After a second's consideration, Antonio promised. And when a quarter of an hour later he said his farewells at the farm-gate he added softly, in young Crowberry's ear:

"Till to-morrow night ... among the azulejos."

V

"The gentlemen are all down at the other buildings," said the English maid-servant who opened the guest-house door to Antonio. "I think they said they would be in the chapel. Miss Kaye-Templeman is in, and Mrs. Baxter."

The monk hesitated. After a single meeting, would it be correct to ask for Sir Percy's daughter instead of finding Sir Percy himself? He was not sure. Yet his dread and loathing of what the Englishman might be doing in the chapel held him back from following. Antonio knew his limitations. After all, he was still flesh and blood, and he could not be sure of mastering his wrath in the presence of a sacrilegious despoiler.

"You may tell Miss Kaye-Templeman that Mr. Oliveira da Rocha is here," he said.

After he had repeated his name twice, the maid led him into the tiny ante-chamber. Antonio saw that the engraved portrait of Saint Benedict had been taken down. It was leaning in a corner, face to the wall; and, in its stead, hung a small oil-painting of two horses and a stable-boy, in the manner of Morland. The large crucifix had been removed from the place of honor; but its shape could still be seen, like the shadow of a dim cross on the white wall.

"Mr. Oliver Kosher," mumbled the maid to somebody in the principal room.

As Antonio passed through the inner door he saw that Isabel was alone. She rose and came forward with such complete control of her blue eyes that the monk had a momentary fear of not being wanted. But there was warmth in her voice and a welcome in her smile. When she caught sight of the gaudy bowl in her visitor's hand she gave a little cry of unaffected joy.

"You've brought the blue bird," she said. "I felt quite sure you would forget all about him. How can I thank you properly?"

"By saying no more about such a trifle," answered Antonio, placing the bowl in her hand.

Hardly listening, she turned her treasure this way and that, as if it had been a piece of Sèvres. For the first time Antonio was able to look at her critically. She was only a head shorter than himself; which meant that she was taller than six women out of seven. She stood up as straight as her father; but, while Sir Percy looked as though he had swallowed a steel ramrod, Isabel Kaye-Templeman was as graceful and supple as a perfectly-grown young tree. She was slender, yet so exquisitely developed in proportion to her height that Antonio felt he was never likely to see a more perfect figure. Her abundant hair was brown-golden--perhaps more golden than brown--and as fine as threads of silk.

Finding the Portuguese October warmer than an English July, Isabel had put on a high-waisted, full-skirted dress of pink-sprigged muslin. Over the shoulders, which were cut rather low, she wore a gauzy scarf, unprimly fastened at the throat by an unjeweled brooch of old gold. As she fondled the penny bowl Antonio observed the fine whiteness and slenderness of her wrists and fingers and the high-bred grace of every little movement.

"You will excuse Mrs. Baxter?" Isabel asked, suddenly coming back to formality. "She lies down in the afternoon. My father and the others are at the abbey. Shall we go down and join them? They expect you. I think they want you to help them."

"Let us join them," said the monk.

While Isabel was upstairs putting on her gloves and hat Antonio paced up and down the familiar room. A carpet, some easy chairs, two small tables, and very many pictures and ornaments had already been unpacked. Most of these importations were pleasing in themselves; but they were incongruous with a Portuguese interior, especially when it was the interior of a semi-monastic building. Antonio, however, hardly gave all this bric-à-brac a glance. He was revolving in his mind, for the twentieth time, a bold plan.

With a promptitude which contradicted one of the monk's delusions about ladies, Isabel reappeared in a large straw hat and announced that she was ready. They started at once. But, instead of taking the direct road, the monk chose a roundabout path to the abbey.

"This is not the way," said Isabel, halting after they had walked forty or fifty yards.

"It is not the shortest way, but it is the best," Antonio answered. "It takes only five minutes longer and it passes the most beautiful spot in the whole domain."

She seemed a shade vexed, and did not speak again until they reached the spot of which Antonio had spoken. It was part of a ravine. Rustic steps led down to the margin of the water, which broadened in this place to a rippling pool. From a face of brown rock, to the right, the bright torrent came tumbling in a thunderous cascade. To the left, at the lower end of the pool, it raced seawards almost hidden in a leafy, ferny, stony channel, whence its voice ascended like the throbbing, booming sound of an organ. Generation after generation of monkish gardeners had chosen this sheltered spot for the rearing of their most precious trees. Araucarias, deodars, date-palms, and cedars of Lebanon were mingled with cork-oaks, eucalyptus, willows, sea-pines, plum-trees, planes, and chestnuts. Ten or twelve tree-ferns overtopped by a giant palm suggested a tropical forest. Stepping-stones had been fixed in the pool at its narrowest part, and on the other bank was a grotto-chapel hewn in the face of a boulder as big as a house.

The stepping-stones were slippery with spray from the loud cascade; but Isabel tripped from one to another confidently and easily, scarcely touching Antonio's proffered hand. On the further bank she paused, to take breath, and stood gazing westward. Below her lay a hundred acres of wood, softly musical with the twittering and singing of birds and with the hum of the hidden torrent. Further down rose the monastery. Beyond, in the plain, could be seen Antonio's farm; and, still further to the west, the Atlantic.

"This is the spot I meant," said Antonio.

"It is very beautiful," was all her answer. She spoke it in so cheerless a tone that Antonio was concerned.

"England is beautiful too," he said. "At first it is only natural you should be homesick."

"Homesick?" she echoed, suddenly facing him with defiant eyes. "I'm not homesick. I don't know what it means. I don't know what Home means, either."

Antonio was startled. Three or four speeches came to his tongue's tip, some of them inquisitive, all of them sympathetic. Finally he said:

"Home is not built in a day. I myself was not bred and born in this part of Portugal. At first every face was strange. But it is home now. This torrent is the stream that runs through the kitchen of the abbey where I used to work. It is the brook that refreshes my little farm. Once it was no more to me than so many gallons of water. Now it talks and sings to me like a friend. Little by little you will learn to love this place."

"I loved it as soon as I saw it," she retorted. "But I don't love it now. I loved it for about three hours."

"Three hours? Why three hours?"

"We arrived here about noon. We left about three. I loved it till we came to your house for dinner. Then..."

Antonio waited anxiously.

"Then," she continued, with a visible effort, "I ... longed with all my soul to be back in England. You said ... you remember what you said about our respecting this sacred place?"

"I remember," said Antonio, his heart swelling with thankfulness. He had cudgelled his wits in vain for a way of introducing his plan; but here was the opportunity ready to his hand.

"Well," she said, "we haven't come from England to respect this sacred place in the least. We have come to ruin and defile it. Those blue-and-white tile-pictures in the chapel are the most wonderful things I've ever seen; but we have come to tear them down. We have come to use the big rooms and long corridors for all sorts of experiments. We shall make them grimy with smoke and foul with fumes; and some fine day we shall have an accident and blow the whole place into the Atlantic, and ourselves with it."

Her bitter and vehement fluency struck the monk dumb.

"That isn't all," she added more bitterly than ever. "When they've fished us up out of the Atlantic and dressed our wounds we shall start making plans for a railway. We shall lose all our own money and make all the honest people in the district lose theirs too. But what will it matter? We shall get something for our gold and silver. We shall be honored with the company of the men who're going to make fortunes out of us and out of your country--men who don't know their own grandfathers. One of them will be kind enough to buy this domain from us for an old song and to build a fine square house out of the ruins. Senhor da Rocha, that is the way we are going to respect your sacred place."

Antonio succeeded in meeting her defiant gaze with a show of calmness; but there was a tremor in his voice as he said:

"If I did not know that the Senhorita is witty I should say that the Senhorita is doing herself a little injustice."

She knitted her brows while she framed an answer.

"Yes," she said. "The Senhor is right. The Senhorita is doing herself a little injustice. She ought to add, in her own defense, that she wouldn't have agreed so easily to come here had she known that anybody cared about the place. She thought nobody would be one atom the worse, save the bats and spiders. Yesterday she learned the truth. But she learned it too late."

In his eagerness the monk strode close to her side.

"Too late?" he echoed. "No, it is not too late. You have great influence with your father. There are fifty places in Portugal cheaper and more accessible and all together more convenient than this for your experiments and your railways."

"Don't call them mine," she commanded. "I hate and loathe them all. But, I repeat, it is too late. Neither I nor anyone else in this world has a grain of influence with my father. Opposition drives him mad."

Her tone was even more decisive than her words. But Antonio could not face the fact that he was beaten. Had not Mr. Crowberry distinctly stated that Sir Percy had gained possession of the abbey solely by the help of Isabel's private fortune? She was not a schoolgirl. She was of full age; and if she was paying the piper surely she had something to do with calling the tune.

Yet how was he to remind her of her rights? Was not his intervention sure to be resented as the extreme of impertinence? Mr. Crowberry had not said that his revelations concerning the Kaye-Templeman finances were made in confidence; but probably this was an oversight of which it would be mean to take advantage.

The painful silence lengthened. Antonio ended it by starting on a new line.

"Those tiles," he said, "are not mere curiosities, to be carted about from one museum to another. I feel as if they are alive--as if your illustrious father will be flaying a living thing when he tears them from the wall. They were not ordered from a shop, and unpacked, and stuck all over the chapel like so much wallpaper from Paris. They represent the life and miracles and martyrdom of a saint of this Order--a saint of the Portuguese Benedictine congregation who spent ten years in this monastery. He died in your England, for the Faith."

She moved uneasily. Thinking he was gaining his point Antonio continued:

"Those tiles were not the work of one hireling artist. In a sense the whole community drew and painted them. Until they were turned out the monks cherished the archives of their abbey; and these showed how, under three successive Abbots, the cartoons gradually grew to perfection. Look. From here you can see the cemetery where the bones of those dead monks lie. Their souls will bless you from heaven if you will spare the chapel they made so glorious."

"Senhor da Rocha," said Isabel, dryly and rather coldly, "we are at cross purposes. You will be shocked; but I can't help it. I don't believe in monks and monasteries, nuns and nunneries. The monks' heaven is my hell. Their God is my Devil. Forgive me if I hurt you; but it seems to me that there can be only two kinds of monks. Those who are not fanatics are hypocrites; and those who are not hypocrites are fanatics. How can any really sane and honest man worship the Creator by despising His creation?"

Antonio was about to reply, when she added hastily:

"No. Forgive me. I have spoken too plainly. Let me return to the point. I mean this: on behalf of any ordinary man or woman who loves this place for old sakes' sake I would work my hardest to spare it. But not for dead monks."

"Then work your hardest for me," pleaded Antonio eagerly. "Don't you regard me as an ordinary man, who loves the place for old sakes' sake?"

"No, I don't," she said, recovering her ease. "You are not an ordinary man. You will grieve over the azulejos for a few days; then, amidst your many interests, you will forget them. Or, better still, you will come to be glad that they have been taken away from a dark, shut-up hill-side sepulcher and placed where millions of people can see them and admire them."

"You mean," he said scornfully, "that if I were a poor man; if I had a beautiful wife; if she and I had grown up together almost from the cradle; if her life were altogether bound up with mine--you mean that if someone should take her away by force and show her every night from the stage of a theater, to a thousand people ... you mean, I ought to be grateful and glad!"

His own illustration startled him. It had leaped into his mind and out from his lips without his consent. It startled Isabel still more; for the tones in which it was uttered were sharper than knives. Once more she lost the mastery over her eyes.

"We must be going," she said curtly, as soon as she could frame a sentence.

They descended through the wood without further speech until the monastery gleamed between the trees. Then Isabel halted and said:

"You ought to believe that I am a better judge than you of my father's character. I repeat that I shall do more harm than good by asking him to spare these tiles. To ask him such a thing will be a more difficult and unpleasant task than you imagine. But, if nothing else will satisfy you, I will try."

"I thank you with all my soul," answered the monk. "But I will exact no promises. As you say, you are the best judge."

"Let me speak one more word--for your comfort," she added. "This morning my father returned from the chapel dejected. He is no longer confident that he can strip the azulejos from the wall. Remember, not a single tile must be broken or the buyer will not have them. My father may fail."

"God grant he may," said Antonio fervently.

"You must indulge me," she answered, "if I find it a trifle hard to say Amen."

VI

They found young Crowberry smoking a cigar outside the principal door of the monastery.

"Are the others inside?" Isabel asked.

Young Crowberry meditated a few moments. Then, with his hands clasped behind him, like a dame-school child repeating a lesson, he answered in an absurd monotone:

"I am Abbot of all I survey, My right there is none to dispute; From the center right down to the say I am free to behave like a brute."

"He is trying to make a parody on some lines by Cowper, one of our English poets who died thirty or forty years ago," Isabel explained to the bewildered Antonio. "I suppose he means the others have gone back home."

"Our respective sires have verily got them gone," said young Crowberry. And, dropping his affectation, he added, "I don't know how you managed to miss 'em, coming down from the house."

"Why have they gone away?"

"To mix a new mixture. Sir Percy has an idea."

Isabel led the way into the monastery. She entered it with a proprietary air which made the monk suspect that Sir Percy had deceived her and that she believed the place to be wholly paid for. Suspicion became certainty. He felt convinced that this was not a woman who would knowingly lend herself to Sir Percy's bargain with the Visconde.

"Show me one of the monks' cells," she commanded.

Antonio hesitated. The spectacle of a graceful girl tripping along the stern and dark corridors had already given him a slight shock. But the cells! Into whose cell could he take her? Decidedly he had no right to show her any save his own.

To his own they went. The monk could never enter the narrow room without emotion, and he was forced to go to the window to hide his anguish. What if this should prove to be his last entrance? What if Sir Percy should indeed defile and destroy the whole abbey?

"It's actually clean," said Isabel, amazed.

"What did you expect?" asked Antonio, turning round and speaking coldly.

"I've no idea. But I know I didn't expect cleanliness," she said. "Who is this bishop? They seem to have stuck his portrait up all over the place."

"He is not a bishop," put in young Crowberry. "He is Saint Benedict, the great Abbot, father of all the monks of the West."

Antonio started. The young man's tone was respectful, and it was evident that he was speaking sympathetically of matters about which he had been reading and thinking. Isabel, however, took little notice of the answer. As usual, she hardly recognized young Crowberry's continued existence. One after another she pulled out Antonio's empty drawers and opened his empty cupboards. Had she realized that the monks had been expelled only seven years before and that many of them must be still living, nothing in the world would have induced her to pry into their sancta; but it was evident that she pictured the monks of Portugal pretty much as she pictured the monks of old England. To her they were forgotten men, vanished into dust ages ago; and there could be no more indelicacy in ransacking their old haunts than in examining the sculptures of a long-empty sarcophagus.

From the cell they went to the cloister. There Isabel quickly espied the spiral staircase; and, having ascended it, she sat down on Antonio's favorite seat of cork. The quiet beauty of the scene subdued her; and not a syllable was spoken until they had retraced their steps and reached the monks' entrance to the chapel.

Before setting foot in the monastery young Crowberry had thrown away his cigar; and on the chapel threshold, with unostentatious reverence, he uncovered his head. They went in, young Crowberry leading.

No irreparable injury had been done. Only in the north-west corner of the nave was there any trace of Sir Percy's operations. He had taken down part of a creamy marble cornice which ran along the top edge of the azulejos, level with the sills of the high-placed windows. A circular saw occupied the marble's old place. On the floor were two carboys of acid, a short ladder, and half a dozen chisels, large and small.

By tacit consent none of the three mentioned this display of apparatus. Indeed, they affected not to see it. Young Crowberry still took the initiative. Standing opposite the western wall, he besought Antonio to explain the azulejos.

The ten blue-and-white pictures were worked out in tiles which encrusted the walls to a height of about fifteen feet. There was one on each side of the grand western door, and there were four on each of the north and south walls of the nave. Each picture measured about twelve feet across and was framed in decorative tile-work wherein green and yellow were added to the blue. Antonio began on the right-hand side of the western door.

"First," he said, "we have the Saint's birth. Like our divine Lord, he was born an outcast. His mother and father were on pilgrimage. Notice the Latin scroll, _Non erat eis locus in diversorio_: 'There was no room for them in the inn.' Through the trees you see the village of Carcavoa as it was before the earthquake, with a Gothic church and two spires."

The next picture was the one from which Sir Percy had removed the cornice; but Antonio did not change his tone.

"Second," he continued. "The Saint's boyhood. The book he is reading, in the shadow of the wayside shrine, is the 'Little Hours of the Blessed Virgin.' The scroll reads, _Zelus domus tuae comedit me_: The zeal of thy house hath eaten me up.' The games the other boys are playing are played in Portuguese villages to-day. The bullock-carts are unchanged also. Notice the two cats--lanky cats with long clever heads; they are Portuguese cats all over."

The third picture was pierced by the doorway which gave access to the cloisters; and the designers of the azulejos had made bold use of what might have been a disfigurement. The picture showed a small monastery. The gables, the dormer windows, the round arches, and the stumpy belfry of this little monastery were depicted in blue, on the tiles; but where there ought to have been a blue-painted doorway one saw the solid jamb and lintel of the doorway through which young Crowberry and the others had entered the chapel. The figure of the Saint was nowhere to be seen; but all the men and women in the picture were crowding hurriedly towards the doorway as if they would see the last of somebody who had passed into the cloister. Above the solid lintel chubby blue boys were painted lying on their chests and trying to look down into the building.

"The Saint," Antonio explained, "has entered a religious house. And as that religious house was this very abbey, you see the point of the doorway. On the scroll, _Magister adest et vocat te_: 'The Master is here and calleth thee.'"

Antonio successively pointed out the pictures of the Saint's first Mass, with blue angels helping to uphold the Chalice, and of the Saint's first miracle, with Oporto in the distance. This ended the series on the north wall. At the marble balustrade of the gilded sanctuary, he explained the stalls, the retablo, and the boldly-ribbed Gothic vaulting, at least a century older than the nave. Then he worked back along the south wall, making short comments on the Saint's shipwreck and second miracle, his preaching to prisoners, his landing in England, and his visit to the Abbey of Westminster, once Benedictine.

"Your Westminster Abbey looks strange," said Antonio. "It is before the alterations of Wren; but I admit the faults of the picture. The next one is better. It is the Saint's death at--I think you pronounce it Tyburn. The horses and most of the faces are quite English. The hurdle on which he has been drawn is broken. Notice the one-eyed man with the butcher's knife. On the scroll are the Saint's last words, the same as Saint Stephen's, _Domine ne statuas illis hoc peccatum_: 'Lord, lay not this sin to their charge.'"

This tenth, and last of the tile-pictures was on the left of the western door; but not until Antonio ceased speaking did he notice a small leather-covered box resting on the ground at the foot of the green and yellow border of azulejos. It was gilt-lettered P. L. K.-T. The lid was off, showing the stoppers of four chemists' bottles and some fine steel tools.

In the same instant, both Antonio and young Crowberry had the same thought. "Lord, lay not this sin to their charge." The words were grimly appropriate to Sir Percy's act of sacrilege; yet young Crowberry felt sure that Antonio had only recognized their appropriateness when it was too late. As for the monk, although his eyes met Isabel's for no more than a moment, he saw that she was wounded.

"When was the Saint hanged?" asked young Crowberry, in order to end the awkward pause. "In what reign?"

"In the reign of Isabel," Antonio answered.

Young Crowberry opened his eyes wide. The monk, however, had already realized his second mishap.

"I mean Elizabeth, Queen Elizabeth, of course," he burst out. "The Portuguese for Elizabeth is Isabel. It's the same name."

But Miss Kaye-Templeman was already moving towards the cloister doorway. Antonio, suddenly losing his English, turned desperately to young Crowberry.

"You've done it this time," said the youth dolefully.

"Wait here," commanded Antonio, in Portuguese. "Don't follow."

He sprang after the lady and overtook her in the cloister, although she quickened her footsteps at the noise of Antonio's. When she saw that explanations were inevitable, she got in the first word.

"Senhor da Rocha," she said, haughtily, "I am willing--perhaps over willing--to be talked to. But I decline to be talked at. This is your gratitude for my offer of help. As for 'the reign of Isabel,' I am too dull to see the joke; but I can see the insult."

She walked on.

"Hear me one moment, I entreat," cried Antonio. "Have we not, both you and I, enough troubles, solid troubles? I have told you some of mine; and, although I do not know what they are, I can see that you have great sorrows too. For Heaven's sake let us not add to them by needless misunderstandings."

He kept level with her as she walked; but she heard him with averted eyes.

"I swear," he added, "that I was not talking at you. I swear I didn't catch sight of your father's hateful tools till I had finished speaking. As for 'the reign of Isabel,' I am a Portuguese. In Portuguese King Charles is Carlos, King Edward is Duarte, King James is Thiago, Queen Elizabeth is Isabel. Those bottles and tools upset me; and I forgot to translate the name."

When he saw that she neither vouchsafed him an answer nor paused in her walk his pride was roused.

"One minute more, and I will not trouble the Senhorita again," he said, with as much hauteur as her own. "I have offered an explanation and I have sworn that it is true. As for insults, I never give them, though I receive many. You are neither reasonable nor just. I have done."

He was turning away. But her pride broke down. She stopped and faced him, and her blue eyes suddenly shone with a rush of tears.

"Yes," she cried. "Scold me, abuse me, make me wretched. It doesn't seem natural for anybody to be kind very long. Hate the sight of me, like everybody else. Call me unreasonable. So I am. Call me unjust. So I am. If there's anything more, I'm ready."

Antonio stared at her in amazement as she clenched her fine hands and stamped one of her small feet. "All head and no heart," young Crowberry had said of this poor Isabel; and, for twenty-four hours, the monk had taken it for granted that young Crowberry was right. Yet, as she stood wet-eyed before him, she seemed to be all one big, bursting, breaking heart.

Her tears helped him like lenses to read her through and through. He discerned the tragedy of her girlhood, passed between a selfish woman and a father who was half a madman. He pictured her, dragged from place to place, from failure to failure, from humiliation to humiliation. He understood why she had builded icy barriers of pride to repel the insolent pity of those who found entertainment in her father's fiascos. And he saw, what she did not see herself, that under all her defenses and pretenses was the heart of a little child. He was filled with a yearning to comfort her; but he could only stand and gaze at her with infinite compassion.

"Yesterday," she went on, "I was happy. But to-day..."

He waited for her to say "I am miserable." But she had seen the pity in his brown velvet eyes and it stung her.

"To-day," she said, "I hate you!"

VII

As the main path from the monastery to the guest-house was broad and open, Miss Kaye-Templeman declined Antonio's protection. The glance and tone, however, which softened her words of refusal suggested to the monk that he was forgiven.

"You can't endure my escort," he said, with a ghost of a smile, "because you still hate me."

"I don't hate you," she retorted. "I never did hate you--not you in particular. For the moment I simply hated every thing and every place and every body. It's over now. Pray believe I don't make such an exhibition of myself often. And please forget, if you can, that I was so weak and silly. Good-bye. I will tell my father you are still at the abbey."

Antonio returned to the chapel. Young Crowberry was kneeling on the lowest step of the altar, facing the empty tabernacle. He rose in confusion and came to meet the monk.

"I thought you had taken her up to the guest-house," he said, as they walked out into the cloisters. "I heard you both go outside. I suppose you wasted your breath. Isabel Kaye-Templeman will never forgive you."

"The Senhorita has forgiven me already," said Antonio. "Or, to be exact, my explanation is accepted."

"Then you've some magic power over her," declared young Crowberry. "I thought so yesterday, at dinner. Now, I am sure of it. With everybody else she's as hard as nails."

"I imagine that bitter experiences have made her suspicious and reserved," said Antonio. "For that I don't blame her. But one thing pains me, beyond words. I can understand Miss Kaye-Templeman having prejudices against the Catholic Church; but she seems equally contemptuous of all religion."

"At Sir Percy's house," explained young Crowberry, "or more strictly speaking, at Sir Percy's innumerable houses and lodgings, you can depend on meeting, any Sunday night, half a dozen second-rate men of science. They're all anti-Christians and most of them are blank atheists. I've heard them talk two or three times. Their position seems to be that we know more than our grandfathers did about the way the world is made; and, therefore, the world made itself. They can't argue; or, if they can, they don't. They coolly take it for granted that everybody who still clings to Christianity is an antiquated fool."

"You think clearly, Edward, and you talk sensibly. In a minute I'm going to ask you about yourself," said Antonio. "But tell me. How far has this poor Miss Isabel been perverted by what she has heard?"

"When she consented to come and live here," Edward replied, "I heard somebody ask her how she would get on without an English church. Isabel simply answered: 'If I've given up church-going, in England, why should I begin it again in Portugal?'"

They emerged from the building and looked up the paths; but Sir Percy was not in sight. Antonio led his companion back to the spiral stairway; and when they were seated on the roof of the cloister he drew forth the truth concerning young Crowberry's state of mind and soul.

From his English journals and reviews the monk had gathered some imperfect notions of the new ecclesiastical movement which a scholar of Cambridge had set going at Oxford. He knew the names of Pusey and of Newman, and was conversant with the main argument of the notorious "Tract Ninety," although it had issued from the press only a few months before. But it was from the lips of Edward Crowberry that he received his first connected account of the matter. The young man, as Antonio had said, thought clearly and talked sensibly. Unlike the leaders of the movement he was unembarrassed by the need to reconcile his new findings with his old utterances; and therefore he saw further than much wiser men into the movement's future. Perhaps some of his more striking sentences had adhered to his mind after the perusal of books and articles; but he understood what he had read, and he had made it his own.

"Our English skeptics," he said, "have thought to take away from us our Christianity. Our Christianity remains; and we are also regaining the Church. In England the very idea of the Church had almost passed away. Our bishops had almost ceased to rule and to teach. Our sacraments had become mere commemorations--like birthdays and anniversaries. But the Church is emerging from the mists. I believe that in a hundred years from now hardly any Christianity will be professed save in communion with the Church. On the one side we shall have the ancient Church, boldly affirming supernatural religion, proclaiming the deposit of faith, cherishing her holy mysteries; and, on the other, we shall have a great band of thinkers and teachers for whom this world is all. The nondescript waverers, betwixt and between, will disappear. There will be only Isabel Kaye-Templemans and..."

"And Edward Crowberrys," said Antonio, coming to the relief of his modesty. "You prophesy boldly. But please make one point still plainer. What will this Church be? I have read something about a Via Media. Many of your writers seem to think there will be three Churches, the Eastern, the Western, and the English--Constantinople, Rome, and Canterbury. They seem to believe that the Church of England can purge herself of heresy while persisting in schism. Am I right?"

"You are right," said young Crowberry. "That is their hope. But do not judge them harshly. There is much in our national Church for us Englishmen to be proud of. And there is much in our history, much in our temperament, which will make our return to the Roman obedience a bitter pill to swallow. I know little of the Eastern Church. There are hardly any English books about it. But what has the East to do with England? On the point which divided West and East, England believes with the West. No. The only Church to which we can return is the Church from which we broke away."

"You are young and sanguine," returned Antonio. "You will want more than a hundred years before the English schism is ended. But I believe that, before you are middle-aged, you will see thousands of individuals returning home one by one. You have told me that these earnest men in Oxford claim to be fighting the battle of the Apostolical Succession. Those men will soon learn that they are already well advanced on the road to re-union with the Apostolic See. The Church in England was destroyed by monarchs' commands and by lawyers' pens; but it cannot be restored, bodily, by similar means. It will be rebuilt out of individual converts, like the Churches founded by the apostles. It will not be a wholesale, sudden, man-made event like the conversion of the Franks after the baptism of Clovis."

They sat silent, looking across the sea towards England, the hidden and beloved isle. At length Antonio asked:

"Does your father know which way your thoughts are running?"

"My father drinks and swears," young Crowberry answered. "But according to his lights he is a Christian. It is his teachers' fault, not his own, that he believes the Pope to be Anti-Christ, or the Man of Sin, or the Scarlet Woman. He ceased to read and think so long ago that his ideas cannot be changed. What would you have me do? I say nothing. I go my own way. The same with my friends. They think I'm a mere rattle like a few dry peas in a box. Let them. I prefer it."

"But, sooner or later, you must take the great step and you must declare it. What will your father say then?"

"He will say what he always says when I cross him--that I shan't have a penny of his money. If he were still rich I could stand up and simply say, 'Sir, keep the money; only pray let me call my soul my own.' But I know, and he knows, and each of us knows the other knows, that there won't be a penny to leave. In his old age I must support my father, and I shall be proud to do it. But, meanwhile, I can only hold my tongue."

After another long pause the monk said:

"One more question. This young lady Isabel. You were so eager to know my opinion of her. Why? Is there anything between you?"

Young Crowberry laughed aloud; and only when his laughter had subsided through many guffaws and chucklings could he speak.

"Is there anything between me and Isabel?" he echoed. "Yes. There is. By Jove, there's a good deal. There's an iron door. There's a brick wall. No, a stone wall--stone-cold, like a wall of ice. Anything between us? There's the whole world; also the sun, moon, planets, and fixed stars, not to mention a few comets and the Milky Way." And he chuckled again.

"Yet you're greatly interested in her," objected Antonio.

"No doubt," admitted young Crowberry. "I'm inquisitive. I'm mightily curious to know what there is behind the iron door, what there is over the brick wall. Not that it is reciprocal. Isabel thinks of me as a mere infant. Or, rather, Isabel doesn't think of me at all. She can't remember my existence; and I can't forget hers. She rubs up my quills the wrong way; but I can't even prick her fingers."

"You know her ten times better than I do," said Antonio. "Yet, after our two meetings, I suspect that you misjudge her. Any hardness--and I haven't found her so hard, after all--may be her misfortune, rather than her fault, like her irreligion. To tell the truth, Edward, I thought you wanted to marry her."

"Marry Isabel?" whistled the young man. "I might as well propose to marry Helen or Cleopatra. By the way, I don't believe that either Helen or Cleopatra was half so good-looking as Isabel. She's younger than either of 'em; but the point is that she's three years older than poor little Edward. No. Fortunately I don't want Isabel. If I did, it would be a sad case of unrequited affection."

He fixed his eyes once more on the far-spread waters. When he spoke again, it was with a solemnity in strange contrast with his interlude of jesting.

"Senhor da Rocha," he said. "I shall never marry. For months this has been growing clearer and clearer to my mind. For the present I shall stick to my engineering. I shall make more in ten years out of tunnels and embankments than my father has made in thirty out of barrels and bottles. And afterwards? I don't know. But something is in store for me which forbids me to marry."

His words moved Antonio deeply. Sixteen years before, his own vocation had proclaimed itself to his soul in this very way. He turned reverent eyes upon his companion; for had not God chosen this strange youth to be a priest and perhaps a monk? In repose Edward Crowberry's face was not without nobility. For the first time Antonio thoroughly understood him. He perceived that Edward's quickness to seize the humors of life connoted a deep sense of its pathos. Under the glittering spray of his jests and sarcasms was an unending undertone of world-woe. Young Crowberry saw, better than others, the sharp outlines of Time's successive moments because their infinitely varying curves and angles cut brilliant patterns in the near background of Eternity.

An inward voice spoke to Antonio. It was as clear as any of the commands which had guided him in the great crises of his history; and he obeyed it without parleying.

"Let us go down," he said.

They went down. Sir Percy had not arrived. The monk walked out and scanned the path. Nobody was in sight.

"You believe," he said to young Crowberry, as he re-entered the chapel, "that some work, some sacred work, is reserved for you in the future? Are you willing to do a good work this very night?"

"You mean," said the youth, "am I willing to sit up with you and to disprove that monstrous tale about a monk's ghost? I am willing. I told you so yesterday."

"No and Yes," Antonio answered. "We will disprove the midnight ghost. But I mean something else. Will you work with me against Sir Percy to save these azulejos?"

Young Crowberry started.

"It smacks of disloyalty to your friends, of disobedience to your father, of deceit all round," Antonio went on. "But think. We cannot serve your friends and your father better than by frustrating a sacrilege of which they will be ashamed when the gains are spent. Remember, these azulejos are not Sir Percy's. He has paid to the Government, which stole this place, hardly more than a tenth of the price, and he has no right to carry a handful of dust or a chip of stone outside the gates. Don't answer me in a hurry. Refuse if your conscience so bids you, and I shall not complain."

He walked away and sat down in his old stall. Young Crowberry moved slowly to the white marble doorpost set in the blue midst of the azulejos and leaned against it, with his head bowed. At the end of five minutes he strode boldly up to the sanctuary rails and said:

"I will help."

Footsteps resounded in the cloister, and, a few seconds later, Mr. Crowberry and Sir Percy appeared, talking loudly. They kept their hats on their heads and their cigars in their mouths. The baronet, who carried a glazed jar, was so intent on his operations that he forgot to greet the monk.

"Well?" asked Mr. Crowberry, sidling close to Antonio. "You've turned up? And you've come to your senses?"

"From your point of view, my answer is No," said the monk. "I have not come to my senses. Has Sir Percy come to his? Does he still persist in removing what isn't his own?"

"He persists," said Mr. Crowberry. "And I can't blame him. If he doesn't steal the stuff, somebody else will. Now take my advice. Don't be an ass. Ten minutes ago, up at the house, Sir Percy nearly blew his daughter's head off for suggesting that the azulejos should be left alone. They've got to come down. Give him a lift and you can make your own terms about the lease of the vineyards. Cross him, and you will lose the vineyards--and the azulejos'll come down all the same."

"Hallo, you've come!" bawled out Sir Percy to Antonio. "We've been waiting for you all day. Hurry up and look at my saw."

The monk stepped forward.

The frame of the circular saw was ingeniously secured to the face of the azulejos by means of leather suckers, such as boys play with among cobble-stones. This simple and portable device served its purpose without doing the tiles the smallest harm. The saw itself had a gear which caused it to descend in the frame as the teeth cut their way downward. Mounting the short ladder at Sir Percy's bidding, Antonio saw that a groove had been chiseled in the cement and that it was filled with an evil-smelling mixture of acids.

"First, we took off that white stone," explained Sir Percy, pointing to the marble cornice. "D'ye see? Then we cut out this channel. D'ye see? Mark the principle. The great thing is, not to try and get the azulejos off the cement, but to get the cement, azulejos, and all, off the wall. D'ye see? It doesn't matter how rough we are with the front of the wall and the back of the cement, so long as we don't crack the tile. That's the principle. D'ye see? Now, pour in a pint or so of this."

"You'll do it better yourself," said Antonio, descending the ladder. Sir Percy promptly climbed up and poured out another acid from his stone jar.

"The acids rot the cement," he went on. "That's the principle. They disintegrate it. You see? Then the saw sets to work. It goes through the cement as if it's Bath brick. We shall get down two lots of azulejos in two places. That'll give us elbow-room for cutting through the cement backs of the lot between with a mason's saw. You understand--a long saw with two handles? D'ye see? The acid and the round saw here and there; and the long saw in between. That's the principle."

The baronet stared at Antonio, waiting for his opinion.

"Well?" he demanded impatiently.

"I am quite unable," said the monk coolly, "to suggest the smallest improvement in your Excellency's invention. But the daylight is failing. If your Excellency works by candle-light or lamp-light, some azulejos will probably be broken. Let the acids work all night; and let us all meet here at eight o'clock to-morrow morning."

"Nonsense," cried Sir Percy. "We've time to get down the first lot."

"And what about dinner?" asked Crowberry _père_, in great alarm.

"Yes. Dinner?" echoed Crowberry _fils_.

"Dinner be hanged!" cried Sir Percy angrily.

"Your Excellency must give the acids all night to work," said Antonio.

"Yes, your Excellency really must," added young Crowberry. "Perhaps your Excellency has forgotten that the great Carthaginian Hannibal likewise employed an acid--namely vinegar--to make rocks friable, during his famous crossing of the Alps, as is narrated by the historian Livy in his twenty-first book. I know the passage well, having had to copy it out twenty times at school for putting pepper in the usher's pipe."

"Shut up!" snapped his indignant father. But the youth was not abashed.

"If Hannibal left his puddles of vinegar out all night," he said, "I, for one, cannot be a party to your Excellency's doing differently. I'm off."

He moved away. Antonio followed. Mr. Crowberry senior, glad of any excuse to get back punctually for dinner, hurried in their train. Sir Percy gaped after them in deep disgust. Then he flung down his chisel upon the pavement and strode out after the others.

"At eleven o'clock to-night," whispered young Crowberry in Antonio's ear.

"At eight o'clock to-morrow morning," said Antonio in a loud voice.

He went his way and they went theirs.

VIII

Had the black monk's ghost attended his vigil in the abbey chapel young Crowberry could hardly have seen it. His labors among the azulejos preoccupied him for over four hours, and it was within an hour of dawn when he stole back on tip-toe to his room in the guest-house.

As for Antonio, he did not go to bed at all. After parting from young Crowberry at the chapel-door, he hastened straight to wake up José; and as soon as he had made sure that José understood the part he had to play, it was time for the monk's morning splash in the deepest pool of the brook. After Antonio had shaved and dressed himself with unusual care, both master and man sat down to a first breakfast much ampler than usual; for who could tell what might befall?

The monk took care to arrive a few minutes late at the chapel. Sir Percy was there already, high on his ladder.

"Hallo," he cried, without wasting breath or time in saying a Good morning. "The stuff works. D'ye hear? It works. We shall cut through the cement like cheese."

"Don't say cheese," pleaded young Crowberry, appearing in the doorway. "It makes me hungry. Say putty, or chalk, or soft soap."

He was swept into the chapel by Mrs. Baxter, who suddenly filled the doorway like a wave bursting through an arch on a limestone coast. Behind Mrs. Baxter could be heard the loud voice of Mr. Crowberry. Antonio advanced to greet the lady and to express his hope that she was well.

"No, Signor Da Rocha, I am not well," responded Mrs. Baxter tartly. "Since you asked me, I am very ill indeed. But who cares? I have long ceased to look for gratitude; but it seems that I must no longer expect common humanity."

"By common humanity, ma'am," said young Crowberry, "I assume you mean ham and eggs, or possibly kidneys and bacon. I too, alas, have looked for them in vain."

"I allude," said Mrs. Baxter severely, "to the fact that I have been dragged from bed, despite my sick and suffering condition, without a morsel of breakfast, to catch my death of cold at an unearthly hour in this living tomb. I do not allude, Mr. Edward, to kidneys and bacon."

"What's this about kidneys and bacon?" demanded Mr. Crowberry, hurrying up with an eagerness which made him almost sprightly. "Where? When? How on earth have you managed it?"

Antonio abandoned the two voluptuaries to the tender mercies of young Crowberry; for Isabel was standing in the doorway. Her walk through the morning air had painted her cheeks a delicate rose-pink; but, as she stood among them with white ungloved hands showing against her blue dress of fine stuff, and with a large white feather curled round her blue hat, she seemed like the azulejos, all blue and white.

"So you have come to see the end?" she said.

"Who knows?" he retorted, smiling sadly. "Will the saw survive the acid? We shall see. But I crave leave to thank you. You have interceded with your illustrious father."

"I have," she said, "and my illustrious father simply ordered me off to bed, like a small child. You don't understand him. He has never noticed that I am grown up into quite an old young woman. He still calls Mrs. Baxter my governess. I believe he thinks she still gives me lessons in arithmetic and spelling. I did my best; but it was worse than nothing."

"If you had succeeded triumphantly," he answered, with one of his unconscious glances into the depths of her eyes, "I could not be more grateful than I am."

Young Crowberry came forward and presented his morning compliments. He added that Sir Percy had found a defect in the vertical traveler of his circular saw and that he wished to be unbothered by onlookers while he put it right. The young man went on to suggest that it might divert that Excellent Creature Mrs. Baxter from the contemplation of her wrongs if they showed her round the monastery.

Grumbling gruffly at his fate, Mr. Crowberry the elder joined the party. Mrs. Baxter composed her features to an iron immobility. She was evidently determined to approve of nothing.

"I confess, ma'am," said young Crowberry, "that the humble entertainment we have to offer is poorer in excitement than some others; for example, than the public hangings which are provided for the nobility and gentry of our own country at this same hour of eight o'clock."

Nobody laughed.

"You are standing," the youth rattled on, "in a monastery, or monasterium. The word is derived, ma'am, as you are aware, from _monachus_, a monk, and _sterium_, a sterium. This passage is called a corridor, from _curro_, meaning 'I run,' and _dor_, a door. You observe the doors on both sides. With your permission, ma'am, we will proceed to the kitchen."

The white kitchen was filled with bright sunshine. The sun's beams came flashing back from the great hood of burnished copper, and the singing torrent was quick with glancing lights. Young Crowberry showed Mrs. Baxter the long turnspit, turned by a wheel at the end, and gravely assured her that it was capable of roasting a pigeon, whole.

"What is that word _Paz_, between the windows?" asked Isabel.

"It is Portuguese for 'Peace,' the watchword of the Benedictine order," Antonio answered. "The monks here were Benedictines."

"What were they here for?" Mr. Crowberry demanded.

Antonio hesitated. Then he quietly gave the answer:

"To pray, and to praise God."

"Praise God, indeed!" cried Mr. Crowberry. "A fine way of praising God to stuff and guzzle from one year's end to another! I'll tell you what it is, da Rocha. You've got your tongue in your cheek. You're a man with fifty times too much sense to believe that the Almighty is pleased with the praises of a greasy pack of gormandizers and soakers. Thank goodness your country has turned 'em out."

He strode out of the kitchen with all the dignity of a churchwarden carrying the collection-plate into the vestry. The others followed.

"What is behind these doors?" demanded Mr. Crowberry.

"Cells," said Antonio, curtly.

"Cells?"

"Why not, sir?" asked young Crowberry, in honeyed tones. "Why not cells here as in other penitential establishments? All the best prisons have them. I thought it was a matter of common knowledge that the principal occupation of a monk when he gets into a monastery is to prevent the other monks getting out."

"Shut up!" snapped his father, striding on.

Mrs. Baxter spoke at last. She adventured the point of her shoe and the tip of her nose into Antonio's cell, which had been left open.

"Is this the condemned cell, Mr. Edward?" she asked with a shudder.

"They're all condemned cells, ma'am," Edward answered. "Every monk was condemned to penal servitude for life. At the end of his term he was taken out to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. A few days after, he was buried alive, or walled up. If this didn't cure him of his errors the Abbot began to think it was really time for something to be done; and he was sentenced to take a bath."

Antonio turned away, grievously wounded. After their solemn conversations on the highest and holiest things, these jests scorched him like hot irons. But, upon reflection, he could condone much of young Crowberry's offense. Doubtless the youth had a good motive in plying the edged tool of ridicule against the prejudices of his companions. But his main excuse lay in his inability to take monks seriously. The youth did not know that Antonio was himself a monk, and that this had been Antonio's cell and that Antonio had spoken to his Lord within it. He had never consciously met a monk in his life. Monks to him were like mailed knights to a reader of historical novels; they were merely the picturesque literary fictions of Mrs. Radcliffe, of Sir Walter Scott, of "Monk" Lewis. Or, rather, monks to young Crowberry were pretty much what exorcists had been to Antonio. Although the Church still ordained exorcists, and exorcists were prayed for every Good Friday, Antonio had turned more than one light pleasantry about them.

Nevertheless the monk could have wished that young Crowberry had spoken otherwise. When every allowance had been made, his irony remained more mischievous than useful; and Antonio determined to counteract it. Turning to Mrs. Baxter he gave her a rapid sketch of a monk's day. At the very outset, when he told her how every monk answered the loud knock at his cell door before daybreak with "Thanks be to God!" the Excellent Creature shivered; but, in spite of herself, she grew interested. Even Mr. Crowberry condescended to return and to give the orator his grudging attention. But at Isabel Antonio threw only two furtive glances; for she seemed to be hearing him with distaste.

"Thank you," snorted Crowberry _père_, as the monk's voice ceased. "You merely confirm what I've always said. For my part I believe that the Almighty intended us to enjoy the good things of life. If not, why did He provide 'em? Pssh! Humbug! D'ye mean to tell me, sir, that the Almighty's pleased with all this nonsensical fasting--with madmen clemming 'emselves till they're like a gang of scarecrows, with their bones sticking out through their skins? No, da Rocha, you don't. I tell you again that you've got your tongue in your cheek."

"Apparently Mr. da Rocha has his tongue in both his cheeks at once," put in Crowberry _fils_. "I gather, sir, that these regrettable monks were, at one and the same time, a gang of bony scarecrows starving themselves to death and also a pack of fat and greasy gormandizers and guzzlers. Such Jesuitical duplicity makes me shudder."

"Come to think of it," blurted out his father, "I shouldn't be surprised if da Rocha here is a Jesuit monk in disguise. Where's his whiskers? Where's his wife? I don't call it natural."

"A Jesuit monk?" moaned Mrs. Baxter, recoiling in horror. "How dreadful!" And she grabbed at Isabel's arm as if to snatch a helpless victim out of danger.

"There's no such a thing as a Jesuit monk, madam," smiled Antonio. "The Jesuits are a Society, not a monastic order."

"There are Jesuit nuns, anyhow," muttered Mrs. Baxter, scowling darkly. "England is full of them."

"Pardon me," exclaimed Antonio, keeping all his good temper. "That can hardly be. There are women-Benedictines, women-Dominicans, women-Carmelites, and so on; but there's no such thing as a woman-Jesuit."

"Pardon me, too," retorted Mrs. Baxter warmly. "I am English and I ought to know. I repeat that England is full of female Jesuits. So how can you stand there, Signor, and say that Jesuits are never women?"

"They are women, of course," interrupted Mr. Crowberry; "old women. Silly old women. Why, they walk about in petticoats, and nothing pleases 'em so much as putting on finery and dressing up images, like little girls dressing up dolls. Tut! But come, da Rocha, out with the truth. I'll lay you a dozen of old Madeira against a half a dozen of your new champagne that you can't swear your Bible oath that you aren't a Jesuit in disguise."

"I won't have the Madeira; but lend me your pocket Bible," demanded Antonio.

"Lay your hand on your heart, instead," Mr. Crowberry answered.

It was plainly necessary to take up the gauntlet which had been thrown down; so Antonio placed his hand on his heart, and said:

"I swear I am not a Jesuit, either in disguise or out of it. I never was a Jesuit; am not now; and never shall be."

"Amen," said Mr. Crowberry, not without traces of thankfulness and earnestness in his tones; "I'm glad you're letting me off the old Madeira. Hallo! Time's up. Here's Sir Percy."

"D'ye hear? Am I to wait all day while you stand there chattering?" Sir Percy bawled out. And he strode back into the chapel.

Everybody made haste to follow. But before they could see whence it proceeded a horrible noise set their teeth on edge. It was as though somebody was creaking a basket-lid near a hive of buzzing bees. Antonio knew that the saw had begun to revolve. He pressed forward and found Sir Percy's gray-headed stolid man-servant Jackson working a treadle at the foot of the azulejos. High above Jackson's head the saw was grinding round in the acidulated cement.

"It works!" cried Sir Percy. "D'ye hear, all of you? D'ye see? It works!"

As the saw's teeth bit and chewed the acrid cud a fine gritty dust flew up into a sunbeam and glittered like the spray of a waterfall. The noise increased, until it resembled the drawing of a great slate pencil backwards along a vast slate. Isabel and Mrs. Baxter put their fingers in their ears.

"It works, it works, it works!" repeated Sir Percy. His eyes shone. Antonio glanced at him and shuddered. One moment he looked like a boy of twenty; the next, he looked a hundred years old.

The saw went on gnawing, gnawing, biting, biting, screaming, screaming, like an obscene fiend, until the back of one azulejo seemed to be wholly cut through. This first azulejo--a tile about eight inches long--formed part of the multi-colored border which framed the picture of the Saint's pious boyhood. Antonio watched it with a white face and a thumping heart. Suddenly he shouted:

"Look out! Stand clear!"

Almost in the same instant the tile leaped forward and crashed down upon the pavement, smashing up into four or five pieces. Mrs. Baxter wailed aloud. Isabel sprang like a flash to examine the damage, and the others were soon at her elbows. They found that the saw had cut down cleanly to a certain distance; but the tile had fallen outward before the scission was complete, and the cement on its lower part had broken jaggedly from the wall.

Sir Percy closed and opened his eyes like a man dazed. Isabel moved to his side. But he recovered himself swiftly and brushed her away.

"What does it matter?" he demanded, in great wrath and scorn. "What are you all standing there like stuck pigs for? It's the border. We can mend it. What does it matter? D'ye hear?"

He cast a glance at the saw. It was correctly placed for cutting down the azulejo which stood below its fallen neighbor. Waving Jackson aside he placed his own foot on the treadle and worked away with feverish energy. Hummings, creakings, and screamings once more filled the holy place.

After the onlookers had fallen back a few yards, the monk found himself close to Isabel. He did not look at her, nor she at him; but he felt instinctively that she was not on his side. Standing with tense limbs and straining eyes she seemed to be putting her whole mind and will towards her father's triumph and Antonio's defeat.

"Take care of your skulls!" sang out young Crowberry. His light tenor voice rose almost to a scream.

Jackson jumped clear; but Sir Percy held his ground until the second azulejo lay shattered at his feet. Then he ceased working the treadle and moved with slow, short steps into the middle of the nave. As he did so the saw, framework and all, plunged after the azulejo with a tremendous crash.

In contrast with the hideous noises which had preceded it, the silence in the chapel was uncanny. Mr. Crowberry sat down abruptly on an old black bench. Mrs. Baxter wiped away real or simulated tears. Antonio and Isabel, once more side by side, stared at the ruins of the saw and its gear. Young Crowberry leaned glumly against the doorpost. Jackson maintained his deaf-mute stolidity.

Sir Percy began to walk up and down the nave. His military rigidity was gone; and instead of standing as straight as a poplar he bent and crouched like a thunder-blasted, storm-beaten oak. Antonio, in his moment of victory, suddenly caught sight of Sir Percy's eyes. They were like the eyes of a long-hunted, worn-out tiger brought suddenly to bay; and, at the sight of them, the monk's heart nearly broke with love and pity. Involuntarily he took a step or two towards the stricken man.

"Get out of my way!" thundered Sir Percy, blazing into terrible anger. "Clear out!"

A chisel was lying in his path. With the toe of his finely-made boot he dealt it so forcible a kick that the iron went ringing across the pavement and chipped a petal from a rose in the lower border of the Saint's Shipwreck. As he strode towards Jackson he limped a little.

"So your dead monks have fought for you and won," said Isabel bitterly, turning round upon Antonio.

"Sir Percy will try again," he answered.

"My father never tries again," said she, once more turning away her face.

Just then they heard a sickening cry of pain; and the monk saw Sir Percy drop heavily from the top of the short ladder. Jackson caught him as he fell. The luckless baronet had been trying to discover the cause of his failure and had thrust his hand into a pool of burning acid. He sank against Jackson's rock-like shoulder and swooned away.

Antonio instantly took command. His strong voice rang through the chapel like a brazen trumpet.

"Mr. Crowberry," he said, "run to the kitchen. There are bowls on a dresser. Bring us water from the stream at once. Edward, rush up to the house. Bring oil and lint--oil and silk or linen or whatever you can. Mrs. Baxter, you will kindly go and prepare his bed at once."

He did not name Isabel; for she was already bending over her father with such anguish in her blue eyes that Antonio could hardly bear the sight. For a moment he was forced to turn aside.

"Take heart," he said softly in her ear, as soon as he was able to speak. "We shall bring him round. For an hour or two, I fear he will have great pain; but there is an ointment at my farm which will give him ease. Be brave. Cheer up. He must not open his eyes on weeping faces."

While Jackson unfastened the prostrate man's collar and Mr. Crowberry bathed his forehead with cold water from the torrent, Antonio hurried through the doorway and sped up the spiral stairs which led to the roof of the cloister. But, about six feet from the top, he pushed open a somber door and entered a long attic which ran over the ceilings of the monk's cells, parallel with the north wall of the chapel.

In the faint light he made out José faithfully crouching in the place which had been appointed him. By his side lay an old ramrod and a mallet. In the mortar between the granite blocks of the wall were the holes which Antonio and young Crowberry had bored in the night. Their measurements were so exact that José's ramrod had easily struck out the azulejos the moment he heard the preconcerted signals of "Look out!" and "Take care of your skulls!"

"Did I do right, your Worship, in knocking over that skriking saw as well?" asked José.

"You did right," said Antonio quickly. "We have won; and now we must care for the enemy's wounded. Sir Percy has burned his hand with acid. Run to the farm. Open the green box. Bring back the yellow ointment as fast as your legs can carry you."

José raced off, hiding ramrod and mallet under his coat. Hardly had he vanished before it flashed across Antonio's mind that some virtue might remain in the drugs which the Cellarer had left behind four years before. He found the cupboard, smashed it open, and ran back to the chapel with oil, lint, ointment, and a cordial.

When José reappeared he was just in time to take a hand with Antonio and Jackson in carrying Sir Percy back to the guest-house. Young Crowberry had ridden off for the Navares doctor. In the baronet's comfortless room the monk lavished all his leech-craft; and soon, under the sway of a strong draught, the sufferer fell asleep.

Isabel accompanied Antonio to the door. He cut short her thanks, and was hurrying away homeward after José, when he heard her light step behind him. She had something to say; but her courage failed her and she did not say it.

"There is something else that I can do?" asked the monk.

"Yes," she answered, with a great effort. "You can ... you can promise..."

"I can promise ... what?"

Isabel blushed furiously.

"Nothing," she said. "Good-bye."

She fled back to the steps. But he caught her and seized the white hand which was about to turn the brass knob.

"You shall tell me," he insisted, mastering her with his velvet eyes. "I can promise ... what?"

"You can promise," she said, looking on the ground, "that I may see you again."