Again he rapped, and this time the door was opened, and the young girl appeared. She looked rather pale, but was very much sprucer and smarter than she had been when Ralph last saw her. She wore a very bewitching kind of gipsy frock of red velvet--the skirt very short and the bodice adorned with masses of shining silver coins, whilst her feet were clad in very smart, dainty shoes, also red, with big silver buckles. "Your friend's gone," she said. "He seemed very upset at your not turning up last night, and went away directly after breakfast." "But didn't he get my note?" Ralph exclaimed, "and didn't he leave any message?" "No, Señor," the girl replied. "No note came for him, but he said he would try and call in here again to-morrow morning, to see if you had arrived." "And he didn't say where he had gone?" "No." Ralph eyed her quizzically. She certainly was wonderfully pretty, and, marvellous to relate, did not smell of garlic. Yes, he would stay, and try and come under the fascination of her beauty as Dick had done. And yet, why had Dick gone off in such a hurry? What had this starry-eyed creature done to offend him? Ralph knew O'Flanagan was at times apt to be over-impulsive and hasty in his love-makings. Had he got on a bit too rapidly? Spanish girls are very easily upset, and perhaps this one had a lover in the background. Perhaps she was married. That seemed to him the most feasible explanation for Dick's absence. To be offended at his not turning up last night was all nonsense. Ralph knew his friend far too well for that. Anyhow, he decided to stay, and the girl offered him the room he and Dick had previously occupied. Only, she explained, he must not go in it till later on in the day, as it was going to be cleaned. After luncheon, which he sat down to alone, as the girl, despite his pressing invitation, refused to partake of the meal with him, on the plea that she had many things to attend to, he went a little way up the hillside at the back of the premises, and enjoyed a quiet siesta under the shadow of the trees. Indeed, he slept so long that the twilight had well set in before he awoke and once again made tracks for the inn. This time he entered by a doorway in the rear of the house, and, in a small paved courtyard, saw the girl, habited in a rather more workaday attire, but with her hair still very coquettishly decorated with ribbons, sharpening a long glistening knife on a big grinding stone, which she was turning round and round with the skill of a past mistress of the art. "Hulloa!" he exclaimed. "What are you up to? Not sharpening that blade to stick me with, I hope." "The Señor has heard of pigs," the girl replied, showing her beautiful teeth in a smile, almost amounting to a grin. "Well, I'm going to kill one to-night."