commanded his son Philip to honour him and treat him with due respect.

As on the day before, when Barbara had only learned in general terms
what the codicil contained, her soul to-day, while listening to the
more minute particulars, was filled with grateful joy.

Her sacrifice had not been vain. For years the fear of seeing her son
vanish in a monastery had darkened her days and nights, and Quijada and
Dona Magdalena had also probably dreaded that King Philip might confide
his half-brother to a reformed order, for the monarch had by no means
hastened to inform the anxious pair what he had determined.

It was not until the end of September that, upon the pretext of hunting,
he went to the monastery of San Pedro de la Espina, a league from
Villagarcia, and ordered Don Luis to seek him there with the boy.
He was to leave the latter wholly unembarrassed, and not even inform
him that the gentleman whom he would meet was the King.

His decision, he had added in the chilling manner characteristic of him,
would depend upon circumstances.

Quijada, with a throbbing heart, obeyed, but Geronimo had no suspicion of
what awaited him, and only wondered why his mother took so much trouble
about his dress, since they were merely going hunting. The tears
glittering in her eyes he attributed to the anxiety which she often
expressed when he rode with the hunters on the fiery young Andalusian
which his father had given him. He was then twelve years and a half old,
but might easily have been taken for fourteen.

"It was a splendid sight," Wolf went on, "as the erect figure of the dark