id for her now."

I shall not relate all the plans we made and rejected. Everything seemed
impossible. We knew from Castro that O'Brien had gone to Havana, either
to take the news of Don Balthasar's death himself, or else to prevent
the news spreading there too soon. Whatever his motive for leaving Rio
Medio, he had left orders that the house should be respected under the
most awful penalties, and that it should be watched so that no one left
it. The Englishman was to be killed at sight. Not a hair on anybody
else's head was to be touched.

To escape seemed impossible; then on the third day the thing came to
pass. The way was found. Castro, who served me as if Carlos' soul had
passed into my body, but looked at me with a saturnine disdain, had
arranged it all with Father Antonio.

It was the day of the burial of Carlos and Don Balthasar. That same day
Castro had heard that a ship had been seen becalmed a long way out to
sea. It was a great opportunity; and the funeral procession would give
the occasion for my escape. There was in Rio Medio, as in all Spanish
towns amongst the respectable part of the population, a confraternity
for burying the dead, "The Brothers of Pity," who, clothed in black
robes and cowls, with only two holes for the eyes, carried the dead to
their resting-place, unrecognizable and unrecognized in that pious work.
A "Brother of Pity" dress would be brought for me into Father Antonio's
room. Castro was confident as to his ability of getting a boat. It would
be a very small and dangerous one, but what would I have, if I neither
killed my enemy, nor let any one else kill him for me, he commented with
sombre sarcasm.

A truce of God had been called, and the burial was to take place in the
evening when the mortal remains of the last of the Riegos would be
laid in the vault of the cathedral of what had been known as their
own province, and had, in fact, been so for a time under a grant from
Charles V.

Early in the day I had a short interview with Seraphina. She was
resolute. Then, long before dark, I slipped into Father Antonio's room,
where I was to stay until the moment to come out and mingle with the
throng of other Brothers of Pity. Once with the bodies in the crypt of
the cathedral, I was to await Seraphina there, and, together, we should
slip through a side door on to the shore. Cesar, to throw any observer
off the scent (three _Lugarenos_ were to be admitted to see the bodies
put in their co