The Chevalier soon requested that he might be allowed some exercise. Don Cristobal had to admit this to be a reasonable desire, and made arrangements to grant it. Beauvallet was permitted the indulgence of walking in the courtyard for an hour each day, closely attended by the two guards who waited on him. There was more to this request than a mere desire for exercise. Sir Nicholas, hurried to the barracks at night, had as yet had no opportunity to take in his surroundings. To walk in the court would give him a chance to get a plan of the building in his mind, which was necessary to a man whose brain was busy all the time with schemes for escape. He knew already, from a glance out of his chamber window, that his prison was upon the first floor. His window overlooked a quiet street that was flanked on the opposite side by a blank wall. He wasted very little time here. Even if the bars across the window had been weak enough to pull out, the room was too high above the ground for a man to attempt the drop. Escape did not lie that way. When his guards came to escort him out to the court he found that his room gave on to a stone corridor, or cloister, with tall open arches overlooking a paved courtyard. The barracks seemed to enclose this court in a square, and as far as Beauvallet could see the corridor ran right round, with doors opening off it upon the inner side. A quick glance up and down as soon as he came out of his room discovered a spiral stairway to the left, set in the width of the wall where the corridor turned at right-angles to run along the south side of the court. The guards directed Beauvallet away from this stair, and went with him down the long corridor to the further corner, and round on to the north side. Sir Nicholas judged the length of the corridor to be as near ninety or a hundred feet as made no odds. On the north side was a large stairway, evidently the principle stair in the building, coming up from the arched gateway to the soldiers' quarters. They went down it, and Sir Nicholas found himself in the open courtyard, with the sun beating down upon him. To the north an arch led to the street. There were sentries on guard there. To one side of this arch was the stairway down which he had come; to the other was a closed door. They paced slowly round the court. The ground floor owned just such another corridor as was found on the floor above. There was another storey, Sir Nicholas ascertained, but the corridor was enclosed here, and had windows set, perhaps, eight feet apart all round the square, each with its little semi-circular balcony, so typical of the Spanish house. Above was the flat roof and the chimney-stacks.