ifix in the breast of his blue
velvet coat--with the intent, as he openly averred, of pawning it so
soon as they got to Madrid.

He turned round upon the huge attendant--a simple Gallegan peasant by
his dress--who followed them by order of the Abbot.

"By the way, sirrah," he cried, "we pass through the village of Sarria,
do we not?"

The Gallegan lifted a pair of eyes that burned slumberously, like red
coals in a smith's furnace, and with a strange smile replied, "Yes,
_caballero_, we do pass through Sarria."

As for the Prior, he stood at the gate where he had given the lads his
benediction, and watched them out of sight. Father Anselmo was at his
elbow, but half a pace behind.

"There they go," said the Prior. "God help them if the Nationalists
overhaul them. They carry enough to hang them all a dozen times over.
But praise to St. Vincent and all the saints, nothing to compromise us,
nor yet the Abbey of Our Lady of Montblanch!"

CHAPTER XI

CARTEL OF DEFIANCE

It was indeed Ramon Garcia, who on a stout shaggy pony, a portmanteau
slung before and behind him, followed his masters with the half-sullen,
wholly downcast look of the true Gallegan servitor. He was well attired
in the Galician manner, appearing indeed like one of those Highlanders
returning from successful service in the Castillas or in Catalunia, all
in rusty brown double-cloth, the _pano pardo_ of his class, his
wide-brimmed hat plumed, and his _alpargatas_ of esparto grass exchanged
for holiday shoes of brown Cordovan leather.

But in his eyes, whenever he raised them, there burned, morose and
unquenchable, the anger of the outcast El Sarria against the world. He
lifted them indeed but seldom, and no one of the cavaliers who rode so
gallantly before him recognised in the decently clad, demure,
well-shaven man-servant supplied to them by the Abbot, the wild El
Sarria, whom with torn mantle and bleeding shoulder, they had seen fling
himself upon the altar of the Abbey of Montblanch.

So when little Etienne de Saint Pierre, that Parisian exquisite and true
Legitimist, finding himself emancipated alike from vows conventual and
monkish attire, and having his head, for the time being, full of the
small deceiver Concha, the companion of Dolores Garcia, inquired for
the village of Sarria and whether they would chance to pass that way, he
never for a moment thought that their honest dullish Jaime from far away
Lugo, took any more interest in