These facts, I say, were entered in my book when I had said good-night to Joan, and left her at the stair’s foot—a merry, childish figure, with mischief in her eyes and goodwill toward me in her words. Whatever purpose had been in the General’s mind when he brought her to Santa Maria, she, I was convinced, knew nothing of it. To me, however, the story was as clear as though it had been written in a master book. “They hope that I will fall in love with her and become one of them,” I said. Such an idea was worthy of the men and their undertaking. I foresaw ripe fruit of it, and chiefly my own salvation and safety for some days at least. Willingly would I play a lover’s part if need be. “It should not be difficult,” I said, “to call Joan Fordibras my own, or to tell her those eternal stories of love and homage of which no woman has yet grown weary!” CHAPTER XIII. THE CAVE IN THE MOUNTAIN. _Dr. Fabos Makes Himself Acquainted with the Villa San Jorge._ Joan had spoken of a Bluebeard’s cupboard in my bedroom. This I opened the moment I went up to bed. It stood against the outer wall of the room, and plainly led to some apartment or gallery above. The lock of the inner door, I perceived, had a rude contrivance of wires attached to it. A child would have read it for an ancient alarm set there to ring a bell if the door were opened. I laughed at his simplicity, and said that, after all, General Fordibras could not be a very formidable antagonist. He wished to see how far my curiosity would carry me in his house, and here was an infantile device to discover me. I took a second glance at it, and dismissed it from my mind. I had gone up to bed at twelve o’clock, I suppose, and it was now nearly half an hour after midnight. A good fire of logs still burned in the grate, a hand lamp with a crimson shade stood near by my bed. Setting this so that I could cast a shadow out upon the verandah, I made those brisk movements which a person watching without might have interpreted as the act of undressing, and then, extinguishing the light and screening the fire, I listened for the footsteps of my servant, Okyada. No cat could tread as softly as he; no Indian upon a trail could step with more cunning than this soft-eyed, devoted, priceless fellow. I had told him to come to me at a quarter to one, and the hands of the watch were still upon the figures when the door opened inch by inch, and he appeared, a spectre almost invisible, a pair of glistening eyes, of white laughing teeth—Okyada, the invincible, the uncorruptible. “What news, Okyada?” He whispered his answer, every word sounding as clearly in my ears as the notes of a bell across a drowsy river. “There is that which you should know, master. He is here, in this house. I have seen him sleeping. Let us go together—the white foot upon the wool. It would be dangerous to sleep, master.”