A glance at the sky from the court showed a noticeable advance of the fire, though the direction of the wind held it in check and carried the sparks and brands off to the eastward. While he stood he heard the clatter of troopers in the street; but it died away presently, and he made his way to the postern. At the end of the passage he reconnoitred the street, now more brightly illumined than before, and was about to leave his hiding, when two horsemen trotted into the light and halted at the crossing, their lance-heads glittering in the firelight. They were too near to leave a possibility of his quitting the passage unseen. Furthermore, he recognized the unwelcome fact that they were there _en vedette_, and would remain. Evidently, the attack upon the patrol had made the Spaniards vigilant. Cristoval set his teeth. Here was a situation, by the fighting saint! Trapped in a building which would be afire before many hours, with a prospective choice of being burned alive, or run through by a Spanish lance in the effort to escape! For a bad quarter of an hour he watched the troopers with an interest his countrymen had seldom roused in him before, consigning them in vigorous whispers to divers painful fates, until, observing one of them hitch himself in his saddle into a lounging seat, he gave it up and groped back into the palace. There was one other exit: the door by which he entered. The darkness of that street might favor. He would try it. In the main court nearest the entrance was the fountain, a pool of some ten feet in diameter with steps descending to the water a yard below the level, and surrounded by seats and parterres full of shrubbery. He stopped there and drank deep, for the fire and cinders would not out from his throat. Then to the door. He laid aside his buckler and put hand to the bar. Cautiously now, Cristoval; for with sentinels near, this business should be of an inconspicuous kind. The timber stuck slightly, then yielded, slipped from his grasp, and fell with a crash loud as the crack of doom.