direct reply to Jim, but only threw her head back and
laughed noiselessly with wide opened mouth. Then leaving the spot she
glided to the staircase and bent down listening intently. As if
satisfied she returned in a moment and beckoned Jim to follow her, which
he was only too willing to do.

She was a strange guide and might lead him to his destruction, but he
was determined to follow her at all hazards for he must find the
senorita and that quickly. So he kept only a short distance behind the
gray crouching figure.

Going through the main hall they came to a fairly broad staircase,
leading to the third floor, thence along a hall dimly lighted to a
narrow winding stair, that brought the two of them to a round platform
of stone with rooms on three sides. This place was badly lit by a tallow
candle, held by a miner's holder, stuck into the wall.

The woman crouched in front of one of the doors, with a wicket in it,
whence Jim heard a low voice repeating something over and over, and the
sound of it thrilled him for he recognized it as the voice of the
Senorita Cordova, praying softly for deliverance. It pierced through
Jim's heart, the pity and the pathos of it, and for a moment his eyes
were blinded with tears. The next moment he was himself again, as he
well needs be. He pushed gently aside the grating covering the aperture
in the door itself, so that he was able to see in. It did not require
much of a slit for that purpose, and he was able to get a good look at
the interior, which was like a cell, with low arched, white-washed
ceiling.

It was not a forbidding room either, for at one end was a latticed
window with diamond panes, and in the ivy that grew outside it you might
imagine the little birds twittering in the summer time. The floor was
covered with a heavy rug and a candelabra of a dozen candles gave a
pleasant light. The room or cell was heated by coals glowing in an
old-fashioned brazier.

Although there were two persons visible, what fastened Jim's eyes was
the figure of the Senorita da Cordova. She was kneeling before a _prie
dieu_ near the casemented window, in evening dress such as she wore when
she got into the carriage. She had supposed that she was going to be
taken to her father, and instead had been brought to this desperate
castle. Her dress of white was ornamented with lace, and there was a
bracelet of odd antique design on her rounded arm that made Jim gasp.

He knew where she had got that.