things that it is sin to speak of.'

'The people of that house . . . ' I began.

But he interrupted me with a savage outburst. 'The people?' he cried.
'What people? There are neither men nor women in that house of Satan's!
What? have you lived here so long, and never heard?' And here he put his
mouth to my ear and whispered, as if even the fowls of the mountain might
have over-heard and been stricken with horror.

What he told me was not true, nor was it even original; being, indeed,
but a new edition, vamped up again by village ignorance and superstition,
of stories nearly as ancient as the race of man. It was rather the
application that appalled me. In the old days, he said, the church would
have burned out that nest of basilisks; but the arm of the church was now
shortened; his friend Miguel had been unpunished by the hands of men, and
left to the more awful judgment of an offended God. This was wrong; but
it should be so no more. The Padre was sunk in age; he was even
bewitched himself; but the eyes of his flock were now awake to their own
danger; and some day--ay, and before long--the smoke of that house should
go up to heaven.

He left me filled with horror and fear. Which way to turn I knew not;
whether first to warn the Padre, or to carry my ill-news direct to the
threatened inhabitants of the residencia. Fate was to decide for me;
for, while I was still hesitating, I beheld the veiled figure of a woman
drawing near to me up the pathway. No veil could deceive my penetration;
by every line and every movement I recognised Olalla; and keeping hidden
behind a corner of the rock, I suffered her to gain the summit. Then I
came forward. She knew me and paused, but did not speak; I, too,
remained silent; and we continued for some time to gaze upon each other
with a passionate sadness.

'I thought you had gone,' she said at length. 'It is all that you can do
for me--to go. It is all I ever asked of you. And you still stay. But
do you know, that every day heaps up the peril of death, not only on your
head, but on ours? A report has gone about the mountain; it is thought
you love me, and the people will not suffer it.'

I saw she was already informed of her danger, and I rejoiced at it.
'Olalla,' I said, 'I am ready to go this day, this very hour, but not
alone.'

She stepped aside and knelt down before the crucifix to pray, and I stood
by and looked now at her and now at the object of her adoration