“None has been given or asked for. None will be,” said Mr Haggerwells in what was, for him, a sharp tone. The gentleman from the legation bowed. “The señorita will naturally be visited from time to time by an official. Without note—notification. She may be removed whenever His Most Catholic Majesty sees fit. And of course none of her estate will be released before the eighteenth birthday. The whole affair is entirely irregular.” After he left I reproached myself for not asking what Don Jaime’s mission had been that fateful evening, or at least for not trying to find out what his function with the Spanish legation was. Probably he could in no way be connected with the counterfeiting of the pesetas. By making no attempt to learn any facts which might have lessened the old feeling of guilty responsibility I kept it uneasily alive. These reproaches were pushed aside when Catalina put her head against my collarbone, sobbing with relief. “There, there,” I said, “there, there.” “Uncouth,” reflected Mr Haggerwells. “Compensation indeed!” “Dealing with natives,” said Midbin. “Probably courteous enough to Frenchmen or Afrikanders.” I patted Catalina’s quivering shoulders. Child or not, now she was able to talk I had to admit I no longer found her devotion so tiresome. Though I was definitely uneasy lest Barbara discover us in this attitude. _15._ _GOOD YEARS_ And now I come to the period of my life which stands in such sharp contrast to what had gone before. Was it really eight years I spent at Haggershaven? The arithmetic is indisputable: I arrived in 1944 at the age of twenty-three; I left in 1952 at the age of thirty-one. Indisputable, but not quite believable; as with the happy countries which are supposed to have no history I find it hard to go over those eight years and divide them by remarkable events. They blended too smoothly, too contentedly into one another. Crops were harvested, stored or marketed; the fields were plowed in the fall and again in the spring and sown anew. Three of the older fellows died, another became bedridden. Five new fellows were accepted; two biologists, a chemist, a poet, a philologist. It was to the last I played the same part Ace had to me, introducing him to the sanctuary of the haven, seeing its security and refuge afresh and deeply thankful for the fortune that had brought me to it. There was no question about success in my chosen profession, not even the expected alternation of achievement and disappointment. Once started on the road I kept on going at an even, steady pace. For what would have been my doctoral thesis I wrote a paper on _The Timing of General Stuart’s Maneuvers During August 1863 in Pennsylvania_. This received flattering comment from scholars as far away as the Universities of Lima and Cambridge; because of it I was offered instructorships at highly respectable schools.