It led straight into the principal street. Jack walked boldly on, thinking that boldness would attract less attention than stealth. He noticed that nearly all the houses at this end of the place were lit up. Sounds of merriment floated upon the air—a laugh, a cheer, an exclamation of anger, the clink of glasses, the rattle of dice. There was a small inn; twenty yards away Jack smelt fried onions, and longed for his supper. The street was empty, and as he went forward he observed that the houses were almost all dark, and guessed that the French were billeted at the end he had passed. By and by he came to the Plaza, a narrow open space in the centre of the town, and saw what was evidently the town-house looming before him, a large building in the middle of the square. He halted in the shadow of a church porch. "There’ll be a sentry posted here," he thought. "I wonder which side of the building he is on!" He hesitated for a moment whether to proceed or to return at once, seeing no prospect of obtaining definite information of the number of the French. "In for a penny in for a pound," he said to himself; "I’ll try another few yards." He chose the street passing by the left-hand face of the town-house, and stole along on tiptoe. A narrow beam of light fell obliquely across the street from an upper window on his left, throwing a luminous circle on the townhouse wall just above the level of his head. He skirted the wall, and had reached the mid-point of that face of the square, when a voice suddenly arrested his steps. "Señor, charity for a poor prisoner. A copper, Señor, for the love of God!" The voice appeared to come from just above his head. There was something in the tone that seemed familiar, and with a quickening pulse he resolved to test the surmise which had flashed upon him. Retracing his steps for a couple of yards, he looked up, and there, full in the shaft of light from the house opposite, he saw the barred grating of a dungeon, and, pressed against the bars—yes, it was the small elfin face of the gipsy boy Pepito. "Here’s luck again!" he thought. Being below the level of the beam of light, Jack himself was out of sight, and he knew that Pepito could only have caught the sound of his footsteps, and must have addressed him without knowing who he was. Putting his hand into the pocket of his breeches—forgetting they were not his own—he took out a few copper coins, and stretched his arm up towards the grating. "Here you are, poor prisoner!" he said softly in Spanish. A low exclamation answered him. The coins were taken, and a small lean hand pressed his gently. "Muchas gracias," said Pepito; then turning to speak to someone behind him in the cell: "A Christian gives alms to the poor, and four noble Spaniards and a gipsy boy will not go supperless to bed." "Four noble Spaniards!" echoed Jack. "Let me speak with one of them."