the
joke of it himself--and Montalvo ended his reflections as he had begun
them, with a merry peal of laughter, after which he rose and ate a most
excellent breakfast.

It was about half-past five o'clock that afternoon before the Captain
and Acting-Commandant Montalvo returned from some duty to which he had
been attending, for it may be explained that he was a zealous officer
and a master of detail. As he entered his lodgings the soldier who acted
as his servant, a man selected for silence and discretion, saluted and
stood at attention.

"Is the woman here?" he asked.

"Excellency, she is here, though I had difficulty enough in persuading
her to come, for I found her in bed and out of humour."

"Peace to your difficulties. Where is she?"

"In the small inner room, Excellency."

"Good, then see that no one disturbs us, and--stay, when she goes out
follow her and note her movements till you trace her home."

The man saluted, and Montalvo passed upstairs into the inner room,
carefully shutting both doors behind him. The place was unlighted,
but through the large stone-mullioned window the rays of the full
moon poured brightly, and by them, seated in a straight-backed chair,
Montalvo saw a draped form. There was something forbidding, something
almost unnatural, in the aspect of this sombre form perched thus upon
a chair in expectant silence. It reminded him--for he had a touch of
inconvenient imagination--of an evil bird squatted upon the bough of
a dead tree awaiting the dawn that it might go forth to devour some
appointed prey.

"Is that you, Mother Meg?" he asked in tones from which most of the
jocosity had vanished. "Quite like old times at The Hague--isn't it?"

The moonlit figure turned its head, for he could see the light shine
upon the whites of the eyes.

"Who else, Excellency," said a voice hoarse and thick with rheum, a
voice like the croak of a crow, "though it is little thanks to your
Excellency. Those must be strong who can bathe in Rhine water through a
hole in the ice and take no hurt."

"Don't scold, woman," he answered, "I have no time for it. If you were
ducked yesterday, it served you right for losing your cursed temper.
Could you not see that I had my own game to play, and you were spoiling
it? Must I be flouted before my men, and listen while you warn a lady
with whom I wish to stand well against me?"

"You generally have a game to play, Excellency, but when it ends in my
being fir