Jack had broken from the boy’s clutch and was already making with long strides to the front door. It was firmly barred and unyielding to his pressure. "Not that way, not that way, Señor!" cried the boy, and seizing Jack’s hand again, he led him to the back, through a narrow enclosure, to a flight of stone steps, at the head of which was a French window with one of its halves open inwards, and a dim light shining through. Running with the boy up the steps, Jack found himself in what was evidently the sala of the house. It was in darkness, but a door at the far end giving on to a corridor was open, and a dim light filtered into the room from a lamp, consisting of a shallow bowl in which a wick was floating on oil. Treading very warily, the two crossed the room to the corridor beyond; at the end of the passage a brighter light was streaming from a half-open door, and Jack, alert to catch the slightest sound, heard a rasping voice say in Spanish: "Now, you old dotard, I will give you one minute by yonder clock. After that the knife, and I will search for myself." Pushing the boy behind him, and signing to him to be quiet, Jack crept cautiously to the door and peeped into the room. Tied to a chair, with a rope cut from the bell-pull, was an old gentleman, very frail and thin, with sparse gray hair and beard. On the table before him a long knife, driven into the wood, rocked to and fro with diminishing oscillation; an angular man in Spanish uniform, his back half-turned to the door, occupied a chair within a couple of feet of the victim, and, leaning forward, elbows upon his knees, gazed with a vengeful smile into the old man’s face. At the side of the room a large escritoire lay open, its contents thrown pell-mell upon the floor. The old Spaniard, bound and helpless as he was, looked steadily with unflinching gaze into the face of his enemy. "Do you think for a moment, wretch that you are," he said with quiet scorn, his tone strangely contrasting with the fury of the other, "do you think for a moment that you will cajole me with empty promises, or scare me with insolent threats? I expect no mercy from you—you were always a villain,—but I can at least baulk your greed. I am an old man, do your worst; your knife has no terrors for me."