I have it. Do you want it?"

"Yes."

And Marcos tried to get his hand through the hole in the wall, but he
failed.

"Aha?" laughed Juanita. "You see I have the advantage of you."

"Yes," he answered gravely. "You have the advantage of me."

And on the other side of the wall, he smiled slowly to himself.

"Go! Go at once," she whispered hurriedly, "Milagros is calling me. There
is some one coming. I can see through the leaves. It is Sor Teresa. And
she has some one with her. Oh! it is Senor Mon. He is terrible. He sees
everything. Go, Marcos!"

And Marcos did not wait. He had the note in his hand--a small screw of
paper, all wet with the dew on the woodbine. He galloped up the hill,
close under the wall, and put his willing horse straight at the canal.
The horse leapt in and struggled, half swimming, across.

To have gone any other way would have been to make himself visible from
one part or another of the convent grounds, and Evasio Mon was in that
garden.

Both Sor Teresa and Evasio Mon saw Juanita emerge from the nut trees and
join her friend, but neither appeared to have noticed anything unusual.

"By the way," said Mon, pleasantly, "I am on foot and can save myself a
considerable distance by using the door at the foot of the garden."

"That way is unfrequented," answered Sor Teresa. "It is scarcely
considered desirable at night."

"Oh! no one will touch me--a poor man," said Mon, with his pleasant
smile. "Have you the key with you?"

Sor Teresa looked on the bunch hanging at her girdle.

"No," she admitted rather reluctantly, "I will send for it."

And she called by gesture one of the nuns who seemed to be looking the
other way and yet perceived the movement of Sor Teresa's hand.

While the key was being brought, Mon stood looking with his gentle smile
over the lower wall of the garden, where the pathway cuts across the bare
fields down towards the river.

"Would it not be wiser to carry that key with you always in case it
should be wanted, as in the present instance?" he said, smoothly.

"I shall do so in future," replied Sor Teresa, humbly; for the first duty
of a nun is obedience, and there is no nunnery that is not under the
immediate and unquestioned control of some man, be he a priest or in some
privileged cases, the Pontiff himself.

At last a second bunch of keys was placed in Sor Teresa's hands, and she
examined them carefully.

"I am not quite sure," she said, "which is the right o