The Catalan was desperate. He cursed his folly in not stationing his confederate on the Darro instead of in the hovel in the Albaicin; but he had feared confusion and felt contemptuously sure of his ability to manage a mere girl. But he had had no experience of girls whom ranch life had made vigorous and fearless, and whose fathers had taught them the principles of boxing. Catalina parried his attempts to give her a stunning blow as deftly as she filled her nails with his skin and hair, and she was so well braced he could not trip her. Once he made a sudden dive for her feet with his hands, but she leaped aside and his nose came in contact with the rock. Suddenly he turned his head. Far above, in the windows of the Hall of the Ambassadors, from which he had made his escape, he heard the sound of voices. That moment was his undoing. With the leap of a panther Catalina was on his back. She pressed her knees into his sides, dragged his head back with one arm, while with the other she pounded his unprotected face. He gave a mighty shake, but he might as well have attempted to throw off a wild-cat of her own forests. He might exhaust her in time, but so long as she had strength she would hang on, and with a low roar, that portended hideous vengeance, he started once more down the bluff. As Edith Holmes led the race through the many corridors and apartments that lay between the court and the Hall of the Ambassadors she knew that the game was hers if she chose to play it. There was but one place in Granada where an outlaw would be secure, and that was in the Albaicin, and she knew the Alhambra too well not to be sure of the route Catalina’s abductor would take. But it was simple enough to persuade Over that the man would be more likely to take an underground route, escaping at the favorable moment by some opening known only to his kind.