feet and began to crawl about the room.

There was very little furniture, but what there was, was good, and of a
graceful Moorish design which suited the wall decoration, and the
horseshoe shape of the window. This had an elaborate lattice of wood,
which let in plenty of air, as there was no glass; but outside were six
stout bars of iron, and the lattice was securely fastened. I stared
through the pattern of wood into a very small but charming _patio_, paved
with brick and tiles, and having in the centre a fountain, with a shallow
basin. Feathery plumes of water played over a few low palms in great blue
and white pots of Triana ware, but as I looked the plumes shrank almost to
nothing, then ceased to wave. The fountain was asleep for the night.

Supporting myself with a hand on the wall, I got to the room of the marble
bath. There, the window was but a foot square, and was set high in the
wall. On a low, carved bench, lay the clothing I had worn on the night of
my visit to the gypsy's cave. I sat down, and explored the pockets. What
money I had had--six or seven hundred pesetas, so far as I could
remember--was gone; so was my gold watch, and the revolver I had so gaily
carried as a sure means of self-protection.

"Gypsy perquisites," I said to myself, but the sight of the clothes
brought back the past so vividly that I could see myself bidding good-bye
to Dick at the railway station. Loyal, resourceful old Dick! Why had he
not found his friend in all this time, while my hands were growing white
and thin?

Surely there must have been some hue or cry, when I did not appear either
at the villa or the hotel? A man cannot vanish off the face of the earth,
I told myself, and leave no trace. I longed for the man with the _capucha_
to come back, so that I could ask him more questions, even though I could
put no faith in his answers; but he did not appear again that night. I
slept after a time, a sleep of exhaustion; and when I waked in broad
daylight, I found a glass of milk on a small Moorish stand by the bed.

I could not bear to drink it, lest the same drug should make me sleep as
before. But how regain strength without food? And evidently I was to have
this or none.

For a time I waited, hoping that my "good friend" would come, and that, if
I told him I disliked milk, he would give me something else, not so easy
to mix with a drug. At last, however, I grew faint. Perhaps, I thought,
the milk was innocent this time. I