o gallants may have disagreed; or one who loved
not dumb animals might have been killing rats. Blood did not disturb
him; but what amazed him, and would have surprised anyone who stood in
that ruinous room, was that there were clean new sheets on the bed. Had
you seen the state of the furniture and the floor, O my reader, and the
vastness of the old cobwebs and the black dust that they held, the dead
spiders and huge dead flies, and the living generation of spiders
descending and ascending through the gloom, I say that you also would
have been surprised at the sight of those nice clean sheets. Rodriguez
noted the fact and continued his preparations. He took the bolster from
underneath the pillow and laid it down the middle of the bed and put
the sheets back over it; then he stood back and looked at it, much as a
sculptor might stand back from his marble, then he returned to it and
bent it a little in the middle, and after that he placed his mandolin
on the pillow and nearly covered it with the sheet, but not quite, for
a little of the curved dark-brown wood remained still to be seen. It
looked wonderfully now like a sleeper in the bed, but Rodriguez was not
satisfied with his work until he had placed his kerchief and one of his
shoes where a shoulder ought to be; then he stood back once more and
eyed it with satisfaction. Next he considered the light. He looked at
the light of the moon and remembered his father's advice, as the young
often do, but considered that this was not the occasion for it, and
decided to leave the light of his candle instead, so that anyone who
might be familiar with the moonlight in that shadowy chamber should
find instead a less sinister light. He therefore dragged a table to the
bedside, placed the candle upon it, and opened a treasured book that he
bore in his doublet, and laid it on the bed near by, between the candle
and his mandolin-headed sleeper; the name of the book was Notes in a
Cathedral and dealt with the confessions of a young girl, which the
author claimed to have jotted down, while concealed behind a pillow
near the Confessional, every Sunday for the entire period of Lent.
Lastly he pulled a sheet a little loose from the bed, until a corner of
it lay on the floor; then he lay down on the boards, still keeping his
sword in his hand, and by means of the sheet and some silk that hung
from the bed, he concealed himself sufficient for his purpose, which
was to see before he should be se