"No; not much, that is," rejoined his friend. "Just as I got my head up level with the grating, and was going to look out, something hit me on the cheek with considerable force, and, losing my balance, I came tumbling down. I am sorry if I hurt you, Harry, old lad." As he finished speaking, both caught the sound of quick and stealthy footsteps retreating across the courtyard below, and retiring, so far as they could judge by the sound, through the gateway by which the writer of their message had disappeared. "Ha!" said Harry; "someone has been below our window again. I wonder what it is this time? And what was it that struck you, Roger; could you tell?" "No," answered Roger. "I know only that something hit me hard on the cheek, and I thought for the moment that my eye was struck. No, I have not the least idea what it could have been." "Could it," suggested Harry, "have been that fellow whom we saw this morning, come back again with another message; and was he trying to attract our attention, think you?" "That I cannot say," answered Roger; "but I certainly heard footsteps disappearing just now. Did not you?" "Yes, I did," answered Harry; "but I did not attach very much significance to the matter until the individual had gone. Well, we do not know what it was, and we have no time to waste; so let us give our whole attention to the matter of that message. Have you got the paper? Well, when we have finished with it, you had better hide it away somewhere safely, or, better still, destroy it altogether; for we never know when we may be searched. They may take it into their heads to do so at any moment." "Ay, we will do so," agreed Roger; "'twill, as you say, be safer. But go on with what you were about to say before that interruption came." "Well," resumed Harry, "as I was saying, it seems to stand like this: Alvarez, it would appear, has doomed us to die at an auto-da-fe, five days hence, in order to satisfy the demand of the people of this town for revenge, their desire for which has been aroused by the capture by Mr Cavendish of the plate fleet off Acapulco. This fact is known by everybody in the town, and consequently has come to the ears of this man, who says he is an English sailor. "I should say that he is probably a man--one of the very few that the Dons have ever taken--captured during some action, and tortured to make him recant. He apparently did so in order to spare himself further pain, as men have done on several occasions, and he is now possibly a serving-man, or something of the kind, in the employ of some Spanish grandee or another. But he has not forgotten the fact that he is an Englishman, and, hearing that two of his fellow-countrymen are to be put to a painful death at an auto-da-fe in the Plaza in five days' time, has made up his mind to save our lives, if possible. If successful, I should say that he himself will try to get away with us.