"Nay," said the Sergeant, "let us wait till we return for that. It is touch and go at the best. But I will stay here till you are safely among the bushes. And then--I shall have some certain words to speak to Senor Don Fernando Munoz, Duke of Rianzares and grandee of Spain, Consort in ordinary to her Majesty the Queen-Regent!" Even as he spoke, Rollo, whose ears were acute, turned quickly and dashed into the ante-chamber. He thought he had heard a footstep behind them as they talked. And at the name of Munoz a suspicion crossed him that some further treachery was meditated. But the little upper hall was vague and empty, the scanty furniture scarce sufficient to stumble against. If any one had been there, he had melted like a ghost, for neither Rollo's swift decision nor the Sergeant's omniscient cunning could discover any trace of an intruder. Rollo attempted no disguise upon his adventure. He wore the same travel-stained suit, made to fit his slender figure by one of the most honest tailors in Madrid, in which he first appeared in this history. So with no more extent of preparation for his adventure than settling his sombrero a little more firmly upon his head and hitching his waist-belt a hole or two tighter, Rollo slipped over the edge of the iron balcony and began to descend by the great twisted vine-stem. He did not find the task a difficult one. For he was light and agile, firmed by continuous exercise, and an adept at the climbing art. As he had been, indeed, ever since, on the east-windy braes of Fife, where swarming rookeries crown the great hog-back ridges, he had risen painfully through the clamour of anxious parents to possess himself of a hatful of speckled bluish-green eggs for the collection wherewith he was to win the tricksome and skittish heart of Mistress Peggy Ramsay, who (tell it not in the ducal house which her charms now adorn!) was herself no inexpert tree-climber in the days when Rollo Blair temporarily broke his boyish heart for her sake. So in brief (and without a thought of Peggy) Rollo found himself upon the ground, his dress a little disordered and his hands somewhat scratched, but safe behind his screen of leaves. Remembering the advice of the Sergeant, Rollo waited for the appointed signal to fall upon his ear from above. He could see nothing indeed across the lawn but the branches of the pine trees waving low, and beneath them feathery syringa bushes, upland fern, and evergreens with leathery leaves. What might be hidden there? In another moment he might rush upon the points of a hundred knives. Another minute, and, like the good Messire Francois, cure of Meudon, it might be his to set forth in quest of the Great Perhaps. At the thought he shrugged his shoulders and repeated to himself those other last words of the same learned doctor of Montpellier, "Ring down the curtain--the farce is over!"