rap spread by the Government after those affairs. What I
suffered for a while! Now and again I heard firing in the castle ditch
beyond there, and I searched anxiously in the papers for the names
of those executed, always fearing to find yours. There were rumours
current of horrible tortures inflicted on those taken to make them
confess the truth, and I thought of you, so frail, so delicate, and
I feared that some day you would be found dead in a dungeon. And I
suffered even more from my anxiety that no one here should know of
your situation; you a Luna! a son of Senor Esteban, the old gardener
of the Primate, with whom all the canons and even the archbishop
talked. You mixed up with those infernal scoundrels who wish to
destroy the world. For this reason when Eusebio the 'Virgin's Blue,'
asked me if you could possibly be the Luna of whom he read in the
papers, I replied that my brother was in America, that I heard from
him now and again, but that he was occupied with a big business--you
see what pain! Fearing from one moment to another that they would
kill you, unable to speak, unable to complain, fearful of telling
my distress even to my family. How often have I prayed in there!
Accustomed as we of the 'household' are to associate daily with
God and the saints, we may be a little hard and narrow-minded, but
misfortune softens the heart, and I addressed myself to Her who can do
everything, to our patroness the Virgin of the Sagrario, begging her
to remember you, who used to kneel at her shrine as a little child
when you were preparing to enter the seminary."

Gabriel smiled gently as though admiring the simplicity of his
brother.

"Do not laugh, I pray you--your smile wounds me. The Divine Lady did
all she could for you. Months afterwards I learnt that you and others
had been put on board ship with orders never to return to Spain, and,
up to the present time, never a letter or a scrap of news, good or
ill. I thought you had died, Gabriel, in those distant lands, and more
than once I have prayed for your poor soul, that I am sure wanted it."

The "companion" showed in his eyes his gratitude for these words.

"Thanks, Esteban. I admire your faith, but I did not come out of that
dark adventure as well as you imagine. It would have been far better
to have died. The aureole of a martyr is worth more than to enter a
dungeon a man and come out of it a limp rag. I am very ill, Esteban,
my sentence is irrevocable. I have no