not
venturing out. You will speak to La Giralda as to your servant, and in
fine--you will comport yourself as if nothing had occurred, and as if no
such man as Ramon Garcia were within a thousand leagues of the
mill-house of Sarria! Do you agree?"

"I agree to anything, to everything!" said Fernandez, eagerly.

"But remember," continued Rollo, "in order to compass this I am
stretching a good many points. I saw your eye brighten just now when I
spoke of giving orders. Now, remember, if there is the slightest attempt
at foul play, we may indeed lose our game, and with it our lives, but
first of all and quite suddenly, one man shall die, and that man
is--Luis Fernandez."

He added this asseveration--

"And this, I, Rollo Blair, of Blair Castle in the Shire of Fife, swear
by Almighty God and the honour of a Scottish gentleman."

CHAPTER XVII

A GRAVE IRREGULARITY

The day wore in the mill-house of Sarria precisely as many thousands of
days had done before. The foreman came for the keys from his master's
bedroom at six of the clock. He wondered at the unwonted sight of his
patron up and fully dressed at that hour, and still more at the tall
young foreigner who sat with his book so studiously silent at the table
opposite his master. The old gipsy woman Elvira, too, was gone and
another in her place. But after all it was none of his business, and the
mill must go on. For the dam had filled up and there was much corn to
grind. Old withered Elisa, the goatherd "patrona," led her tinkling
flock past the door a score of yards and then returned with her pail as
was her wont. She saw Senor Fernandez at his window, and he made a
strange appealing motion with his hands to her, then glanced over his
shoulder.

Perhaps (so she thought) the poor man had taken to drinking at night as
that wicked brother of his used to do down at the _venta_. But the true
nature of the Senor's complaint did not dawn upon her till later.

From nine till half-past eleven none outside of the mill-house saw Senor
Luis. The stranger also was absent upon his occasions, and the doctor,
coming early to see his patient, found only the gipsy woman, who did not
appear to have understood the directions he had given her the day
before. The Senor himself was out of the way, but the doctor, glad to
find his patient so quiescent and apparently in such good condition,
soon took his leave, and in the mill-house La Giralda ruled alone.

* *