Denny accompanied this remark with such a yawn that I suggested he should go to bed.

“And aren’t you going to bed?” he asked.

“I’ll take first watch,” said I.  “It’s nearly twelve now.  I’ll wake you at two, and you can wake Hogvardt at five, and Watkins will be fit and well at breakfast time, and can give us roast cow.”

Thus I was left alone again; and I sat, reviewing the position.  Would the islanders fight for their lady?  Or would they let us go?  They would only let us go, I felt sure, if Constantine were outvoted, for he could not afford to see me leave Neopalia with a head on my shoulders and a tongue in my mouth.  Then they probably would fight.  Well, I calculated that as long as our provisions held out, we could not be stormed; our stone fortress was too strong.  But we could be beleaguered and starved out, and should be very soon, unless the lady’s influence could help us.  I had just arrived at the conclusion that I would talk very seriously to her in the morning, when I heard a remarkable sound.

“There never was such a place for queer noises,” said I, pricking up my ears.

The noise seemed to come from directly above my head; it sounded as though a light, stealthy tread were passing over the roof of the hall in which I sat.  But the only person in the house besides ourselves was the prisoner; she had been securely locked in her room; how then could she be on the top of the hall?  For her room was in the turret over the door.  Yet the steps crept over my head, going toward the kitchen.  I snatched up my revolver, and trod with a stealth equal to the stealth of the steps overhead, across the hall and into the kitchen beyond.  My three companions slept the sleep of tired men, but I ruthlessly roused Denny.

“Go on guard in the hall,” said I; “I want to have a look round.”

Denny was sleepy, but obedient.  I saw him start for the hall, and went on till I reached the compound behind the house.  Here I stood, deep in the shadow of the wall.  The steps were now over my head again.  I glanced up cautiously, and above me, on the roof, three yards to the right, I saw the flutter of a white kilt.

“There are more ways out of this house than I know,” I thought to myself.

I heard next a noise as though of something being pushed cautiously along the flat roof.  Then there protruded from between two of the battlements the end of a ladder!  I crouched closer under the wall.  The light flight of steps was let down; it reached the ground; the kilted figure stepped on it and began to descend.  Here was the Lady Euphrosyne again!  Her eagerness to go to her own room was fully explained; there was a way from it across the house and out on to the roof of the kitchen; the ladder showed that the way was kept in use.  I stood still.  She reached the ground, and as her foot touched it she gave the softest possible little laugh of gleeful triumph.  A pretty little laugh it was.  Then