ntly the _capucha_ was on the other side of
the door, a bolt slid into place, and the key turned in the lock.

Rage gave me a brief spurt of strength. I caught up the carved wooden
bench in the bathroom, and dashed it furiously again and again against a
panel of the door. But the strong wood did not even crack under my blows.

As hour after hour passed, and I was left alone, from time to time I
renewed my efforts, with no result except that eventually I broke the
bench. Then I tore at the lattice of the window, thrusting my fingers
through, and trying vainly to pull the woodwork to pieces. Though the iron
bars on the outside would prevent my escaping into the _patio_, I thought,
if the lattice were broken, shouts might be heard more easily.

At last, when I had been obliged to give up hope, I pressed my face
against the close pattern of the woodwork and yelled lustily, till my
voice failed. But my own shouts were the only sounds I heard, save distant
church bells, and the singing of subterranean waters, silent only at night
when the fountain went to sleep. It would be all but impossible, I had to
admit, for anyone outside to judge the direction of a cry, coming through
a screened window surrounded on all sides by high house walls.

Darkness fell; and I grew so hungry that I would gladly have drunk the
milk left since morning. I tasted it, and found it spoiled by the heat,
for the day had been warm. In disgust I threw it away, but when all that
night had gone and part of the next day, I regretted my fastidiousness.

Frequent draughts of water from the room of the marble bath gave me an
occasional fillip, but a man recovering from congestion of the brain or
some such malady, following the breaking of his head, cannot live long on
water; and it was clear that my host, disgusted with my "ingratitude,"
intended to punish me cruelly or to put an end to me by starvation.

When the second night closed in, I made up my mind that he had decided
upon my death. Perhaps, if I had been docile, when the time fixed by his
employer had expired, he might have chosen to set me free, trusting that I
believed his story. But seeing that I did not believe it, that I would
spare no effort, no trick, which might enable me to escape while my
presence in the outside world was still highly undesirable, the man had
probably crushed all humane feeling for his prisoner. Since no one had
sought me, living, in his house, it was unlikely that I shoul