The reader may remember that when Meg visited the gallant Captain Montalvo upon a previous occasion, she had taken the liberty of helping herself to certain papers which she found lying just inside an unlocked desk.  These papers on examination, as she feared might be the case, for the most part proved to be quite unimportant—­unpaid accounts, military reports, a billet or two from ladies, and so forth.  But in thinking the matter over Black Meg remembered that this desk had another part to it, which seemed to be locked, and, therefore, just in case they should prove useful, she took with her a few skeleton keys and one or two little instruments of steel and attended the pleasure of her noble patron at an hour when she believed that he would be at breakfast in another room.  Things went well; he was at breakfast and she was left alone in the chamber with the desk.  The rest may be guessed.  Replacing the worthless bundle in the unlocked part, by the aid of her keys and instruments she opened the inner half.  There sure enough were letters hidden, and in a little drawer two miniatures framed in gold, one of a lady, young and pretty with dark eyes, and the other of two children, a boy and a girl of five or six years of age.  Also there was a curling lock of hair labelled in Montalvo’s writing—­“Juanita’s hair, which she gave me as a keepsake.”

Here was treasure indeed whereof Black Meg did not fail to possess herself.  Thrusting the letters and other articles into the bosom of her dress to be examined at leisure, she was clever enough, before closing and re-locking the desk, to replace them with a dummy bundle, hastily made up from some papers that lay about.

When everything had been satisfactorily arranged she went outside and chattered for a while with the soldier on guard, only re-entering the room by one door as Montalvo appeared in it through the other.

“Well, my friend,” he said, “have you the evidence?”

“I have some evidence, Excellency,” she answered.  “I was present at the dinner that you ate last night, although none of it came my way, and—­I was present afterwards.”

“Indeed.  I thought I saw you slip in, and allow me to congratulate you on that; it was very well thought out and done, just as folk were moving up and down the stairs.  Also, when I went home, I believe that I recognised a gentleman in the street whom I have been given to understand you honour with your friendship, a short, stout person with a bald head; let me see, he was called the Butcher at The Hague, was he not?  No, do not pout, I have no wish to pry into the secrets of ladies, but still in my position here it is my business to know a thing or two.  Well, what did you see?”

“Excellency, I saw the young man I was sent to watch and Hendrik Brant, the son of the rich goldsmith at The Hague, praying side by side upon their knees.”

“That is bad, very bad,” said Montalvo shaking his head, “but——­”