"but when I am required to guide a party
secretly to San Ildefonso, where the court of the Queen-Regent is
sojourning, it does not require great penetration to see the general
nature of the service upon which I am engaged!"

Rollo recovered himself.

"You have not yet told me what you have discovered," he said,
expectantly.

"No," replied the Sergeant with great composure--"that can wait."

For little Concha was approaching; and though he had limitless
expectations of the good influence of that young lady upon the military
career of his officer, he did not judge it prudent to communicate
intelligence of moment in her presence. Wherein for once he was wrong,
since that pretty head of the Andalucian beauty, for all its clustering
curls, was full of the wisest and most far-seeing counsel--indeed, more
to be trusted in a pinch than the _juntas_ of half-a-dozen provinces.

But the Sergeant considered that when a girl was pretty and aware of it,
she had fulfilled her destiny--save as it might be in the making of
military geniuses. Therefore he remained silent as the grave so long as
Concha stayed. Observing this, the girl asked a simple question and then
moved off a little scornfully, only remarking to herself: "As if I could
not make him tell me whenever I get him by himself!"

She referred (it is needless to state) not to Sergeant Cardono, but to
his commanding officer, Senor Don Rollo Blair of Blair Castle in the
self-sufficient shire of Fife.

CHAPTER XXVI

DEEP ROMANY

The news which Sergeant Cardono had to communicate was indeed fitted to
shake the strongest nerves. If true, it took away from Rollo at once all
hope of the success of his mission. He saw himself returning disgraced
and impotent to the camp of Cabrera, either to be shot out of hand, or
worse still, to be sent over the frontier as something too useless and
feeble to be further employed.

Briefly, the boy's news as repeated by La Giralda to the Sergeant,
informed Rollo that though the court was presently at La Granja and many
courtiers in the village of San Ildefonso, the royal guards through fear
and hunger had mutinied and marched back to Madrid, and that the gipsies
were gathering among the mountains in order to make a night attack upon
the stranded and forsaken court of Spain.

In the sergeant's opinion not a moment was to be lost. The object of the
hill Gitanos was pure plunder, but they would think nothing of
bloodshed, and would