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.  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 groves, 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.