Most strange and incomprehensible of all that the light revealed, was the appearance of the giant El Sarria, who, his hands and face bleeding with scratches, and seated on the final steps of the cork-screw staircase, held in his arms clear of the ground the bent and contorted form of a young girl. So desperate were her struggles that it was all he could do to confine her feet by passing them under his arm, while with one great palm he grasped two flat and meagre wrists in a grip of steel. Yet in spite of his best efforts the wild thing still struggled, and indeed more than once came within a hair's-breadth of fastening her teeth in his cheek. As he had said, there was more of the wild beast of the woods taken in a trap than of human creature in these frantic struggles and inarticulate cries. The girl foamed at the mouth. She threw herself backward into the shape of a bow till her head almost touched her feet, and again momentarily twisting herself like an eel half out of El Sarria's grasp, she endeavoured, with a force that seemed impossible to so frail a body, to reach the group by the door, where Munoz was still supporting the Queen Maria Cristina. Presently Cardono desisted from his examination of the body of the waiting-woman. He shook his head murmuring--"Dead! Dead! of a certainty stone-dead!" And the Sergeant was a good judge of life and death. He had seen much of both. Then he came over to where El Sarria was still struggling awkwardly with the wild and maniacal thing, as if he could not bring his great strength to bear upon a creature so lithe and quick. At the first glance he started back and turned his gaze on the royal group. For that which he now saw, distorted with the impotence of passion and madness, was no other than the little girl whom he had met in the camp of the gipsies on the side of Guadarrama--the daughter of Munoz, the plan-maker and head-centre of the whole attack. The Sergeant stood a moment or two fingering his chin, as a man does who considers with himself whether it is worth while shaving. Then with his usual deliberation he undid a leathern strap from his waist and with great consideration but equal effectiveness he buckled the girl's hands firmly behind her back. Then with a sash of silk he proceeded to do the like office with her feet. Just as he was tying the final knots, the girl made one supreme effort. She actually succeeded in twisting her body out of the arms of El Sarria, and flung herself headlong in the direction of Munoz and the Queen, spitting like a cat. But the Sergeant's extemporised shackles did their work, and the poor tortured creature would have fallen on her face upon the cold flags of the stone floor but that El Sarria caught her in his arms, and lifting her gently up, proceeded to convey her to another apartment where she might more safely be taken care of.