“You have given us a hard race.  By Jove, you rode magnificently and climbed heroically.  I admire you for it.  It is fine to bring down game like you, Clarenden.  You have your uncle’s spirit, and a six-foot body that dwarfs his short stature.  And we come as gentlemen only, if we can deal with a gentleman.  It wasn’t our men who struck your nun down there.  But if you, young man, dare to show one ounce of fighting spirit now, behind you on the rocks—­don’t look—­as I lift my hand are my good friends who will put a bullet into the brain beneath that golden hair, and you will follow.  Being a game-cock cannot help you now.  It will only hasten things.  Deliver that girl to me at once, or my men will close in upon you and no power on earth can save you.”

Eloise had sprung to her feet and stood beside me, and both of us knew the helplessness of our plight.  A startling picture it must have been, and one the cliffs above the San Christobal will hardly see again:  the blue June sky arched overhead, unscarred by a single cloud-fleck, the yellow plain winding between the high picturesque cliffs, where silence broods all through the long hours of the sunny day; the pictured rocks with their furnace-blackened faces white—­outlined with the story of the dim beginnings of human strivings.  And standing alone and defenseless on the little table of stone, as if for sacrifice, the tall, stalwart young plainsman and the beautiful girl with her golden hair in waving masses about her uncovered head, her sweet face white as the face of the dying nun beside the sandy arroyo below us, her big dark eyes full of a strange fire.

“I order you to close in and take these two at once.”  The imperious command rang out, and the rocks across the valley must have echoed its haughty tone.

“And I order you to halt.”

The voice of Father Josef, clear and rich and powerful, burst upon the silence like cathedral music on the still midnight air.  The priest’s tall form rose up on a great mass of rock across the cleft before us—­Father Josef with bared head and flashing eyes and a physique of power.

Ferdinand Ramero turned like a lion at bay.  “You are one man.  My force number a full dozen.  Move on,” he ordered.

Again the voice of Father Josef ruled the listening ears.

“Since the days of old the Church has had the power to guard all that come within the shelter of the holy sanctuary.  And to the Church of God was given also long ago the might to protect, by sanctuary privilege, the needy and the defenseless.  Ferdinand Ramero, note that little table of rock where those two stand helpless in your grasp.  Around them now I throw, as I have power to throw, the sacred circle of our Holy Church in sanctuary shelter.  Who dares to step inside it will be accursed in the sight of God.”

Never, never will I live through another moment like to that, nor see the power of the Unseen rule things that are seen with such unbreakable strength.