Now it is a curious thing that, whereas in the ordinary way I am about one of the heaviest and solidest sleepers you could meet in a day's journey, when danger threatens me or my interests I seem to have some special intuition which keeps me awake and sensitive to the slightest omen or sound. I can't explain it. There it is. Ever since I was a boy I have possessed it, and not once has it failed to warn me when I ought to be up and about. And the odd part of it was that it made itself most painfully evident this night on which Don Jose Casteno proffered to look after me. In vain I heard his own soft and regular breathing as I crept to the half-open door noiselessly and listened to his movements. In vain I drew the clothes right over my head and conjured up sheep jumping over a stile; pigs elbowing each other through a half-open gate; dogs passing in endless procession, each with a most plaintive look of entreaty that I should wear my brain out counting them for some unseen but remorseless master-calculator--I could not go to sleep. Even the Brahmin magic word "O--om," which I repeated slowly twice a minute, expelling the air each time most completely from my lungs, failed to hypnotise me. And then all at once I heard something--a slow grating sound that seemed to suggest treachery and mischief. With all my senses painfully alert I wriggled off my bed and went on hands and knees, dressed only in my trousers and shirt, to the door of my outer office. To my surprise I found Casteno, crouching on his knees also, in front of the fire, which threw a powerful rosy glare on his clean-shaven features. He had pulled a long evil-looking dagger out of a belt hidden near his waist and was sharpening its edge on the hearthstone! He meant mischief. To whom? Suddenly, before I had time to think, he rose, and taking up his clerical-looking hat he stepped noiselessly across the office and hastened off down the street, a look of terrible resolution on his face. Whither was he bound? Had he heard something that had put him on his guard as he sat crouched over the fire in my arm-chair? Had he seen something or somebody that meant mischief to me? Or had he suddenly resolved to take advantage of those early morning hours to avenge himself on some enemy who lived near at hand? That was where I felt myself as up against a solid wall; it was so hard to divine what was at the back of a foreign stranger with a past that might have been crowded with duel and vendetta and adventure that had given birth to a dozen most deadly hatreds and lusts for revenge.