They had no danger to encounter, though they knew not that. Neither vidette nor sentinel was stationed there now; and, without challenge or obstruction, they reached the platform on which the building stood, the soldiers taking to right and left till they swarmed around it as bees. But they found no honey inside their hive. There was a summons to surrender, which received no response. Repeated louder, and a carbine fired, the result was the same. Silence inside, there could be no one within. Nor was there. When the Hussar colonel, with a dozen of his men, at length screwed up courage to make a burst into the doorway, and on to the Refectory, they saw but the evidence of late occupancy in the fragments of a supper, with some dozens of wine bottles "down among the dead men," empty as the building itself. Disappointed as were the soldiers at finding them so, but still more their commanding officer at his hated enemies having again got away from him. His soul was brimful of chagrin, nor did it allay the feeling to learn how, when a path was pointed out to him leading down the other side, they must have made off. And along such a path pursuit was idle. No one could say where it led--like enough to a trap. He was not the only one of the party who felt disappointed at the failure of the expedition. Its guide had reason to be chagrined, too, in his own way of thinking, much more than the leader himself. For not only had he lost the goods obtained under false pretences, but the hope of reward for his volunteered services. Still the dwarf was not so down in the mouth. He had another arrow in his quiver--kept in reserve for reasons of his own--a shaft from which he expected more profit than all yet spent. And as the Hussar colonel was swearing and raging around, he saw his opportunity to discharge it. With half a dozen whispered words he tranquillised the latter; after which there was a brief conference between the two, its effect upon Santander showing itself in his countenance, that became all agleam, lit up with a satisfied but malignant joy. When, in an hour after, they were again in their saddles riding in return for the city, a snatch of dialogue between Santander and Ramirez gave indication of what so gratified the colonel of the Hussars. "Well, Major," he said, "we've done road enough for this day. You'll be wanting rest by the time you get to quarters." "That's true enough, Colonel. Twice to San Augustin and back, with the additional mileage up the mountains--twenty leagues I take it--to say nothing of the climbing."