demoniac.
He too was like a spider, with his body at no time slender all bunched
up on the rope, and his shadow was six times his size: you could turn
from the spider's shadow to the spider and see that it was for the most
part a fancy of the candle half crazed by the draughts, but to turn
from mine host's shadow to himself and to see his wicked eyes was to
say that the candle's wildest fears were true. So he climbed down his
rope holding his poniard upward. But when he came within perhaps ten
feet of the bed he pointed it downward and began to sway about. It will
be readily seen that by swaying his rope at a height mine host could
drop on any part of the bed. Rodriguez as he watched him saw him
scrutinise closely and continue to sway on his rope. He feared that
mine host was ill satisfied with the look of the mandolin and that he
would climb away again, well warned of his guest's astuteness, into the
heights of the ceiling to devise some fearfuller scheme; but he was
only looking for the shoulder. And then mine host dropped; poniard
first, he went down with all his weight behind it and drove it through
the bolster below where the shoulder should be, just where we slant our
arms across our bodies, when we lie asleep on our sides, leaving the
ribs exposed: and the soft bed received him. And the moment that mine
host let go of his rope Rodriguez leaped to his feet. He saw Rodriguez,
indeed their eyes met as he dropped through the air, but what could
mine host do? He was already committed to his stroke, and his poniard
was already deep in the mattress when the good Castilian blade passed
through his ribs.

THE SECOND CHRONICLE

HOW HE HIRED A MEMORABLE SERVANT

When Rodriguez woke, the birds were singing gloriously. The sun was up
and the air was sparkling over Spain. The gloom had left his high
chamber, and much of the menace had gone from it that overnight had
seemed to bode in the corners. It had not become suddenly tidy; it was
still more suitable for spiders than men, it still mourned and brooded
over the great family that it had nursed and that evil days had so
obviously overtaken; but it no longer had the air of finger to lips, no
longer seemed to share a secret with you, and that secret Murder. The
rats still ran round the wainscot, but the song of the birds and the
jolly, dazzling sunshine were so much larger than the sombre room that
the young man's thoughts escaped from it and ran free to the fields.