It
may have been only his fancy but the world seemed somehow brighter for
the demise of mine host of the Dragon and Knight, whose body still lay
hunched up on the foot of his bed. Rodriguez jumped up and went to the
high, barred window and looked out of it at the morning: far below him
a little town with red roofs lay; the smoke came up from the chimneys
toward him slowly, and spread out flat and did not reach so high.
Between him and the roofs swallows were sailing.

He found water for washing in a cracked pitcher of earthenware and as
he dressed he looked up at the ceiling and admired mine host's device,
for there was an open hole that had come noiselessly, without any
sounds of bolts or lifting of trap-doors, but seemed to have opened out
all round on perfectly oiled grooves, to fit that well-to-do body, and
down from the middle of it from some higher beam hung the rope down
which mine host had made his last journey.

Before taking leave of his host Rodriguez looked at his poniard, which
was a good two feet in length, not counting the hilt, and was surprised
to find it an excellent blade. It bore a design on the steel
representing a town, which Rodriguez recognised for the towers of
Toledo; and had held moreover a jewel at the end of the hilt, but the
little gold socket was empty. Rodriguez therefore perceived that the
poniard was that of a gallant, and surmised that mine host had begun
his trade with a butcher's knife, but having come by the poniard had
found it to be handier for his business. Rodriguez being now fully
dressed, girt his own blade about him, and putting the poniard under
his cloak, for he thought to find a use for it at the wars, set his
plumed hat upon him and jauntily stepped from the chamber. By the light
of day he saw clearly at what point the passages of the inn had dared
to make their intrusion on the corridors of the fortress, for he walked
for four paces between walls of huge grey rocks which had never been
plastered and were clearly a breach in the fortress, though whether the
breach were made by one of the evil days that had come upon the family
in their fastness, and whether men had poured through it with torches
and swords, or whether the gap had been cut in later years for mine
host of the Dragon and Knight, and he had gone quietly through it
rubbing his hands, nothing remained to show Rodriguez now.

When he came to the dining-chamber he found Morano astir. Morano looked
up from his