untarily renounced
his claim to her hand, and bade her farewell for ever, he had not had
courage to part. By a strong effort, he now repressed the emotion which
its sight, and the recollections it called up, had occasioned him, and
he became calm and collected as before. Drawing a table towards him, he
made use of writing-materials, which he had asked for and obtained, to
commence a long letter to Mariano Torres. This his confessor had
promised should be conveyed to his friend.

He had written but a few lines, when a slight sound at the room window
roused his attention. The noise was too trifling to be much heeded; it
might have been a passing owl or bat flapping its wing against the
wooden shutter. Herrera resumed his writing. A few moments elapsed, and
the noise was again heard. This time it was a distinct tapping upon the
shutter, very low and cautious, but repeated with a degree of regularity
that argued, on the part of the person making it, a desire of attracting
his attention. Herrera rose from his seat, and obeying a sort of
instinct or impulse, for which he would himself have had trouble to
account, masked the lamp behind a piece of furniture, and hastening to
the window, which opened inwards, cautiously unlatched it. A man, whose
features were unknown to him, was supporting himself on the ledge
outside, his legs gathered under him, and nearly the whole of his thin
flexible body coiled up within the deep embrasure of the window. Putting
his finger to his lips, to enjoin silence, he severed, by one blow of a
keen knife, a cord that encircled his waist, and then springing lightly
and actively into the room, closed the shutter, since the opening of
which, so rapid had been his movements, not ten seconds had elapsed.

Although the motive of this strange intrusion was entirely unknown to
him, Herrera at once inferred that it boded good rather than evil. He
was not long left in doubt. The esquilador pointed to Herrera's wounded
arm, the sleeve of which was still cut open, although the wound was
healed, and the limb had regained its strength.

"Have you full use of that?" said he.

"I have," replied Herrera. "But what is your errand here?"

"To save you," answered the gipsy. "There is no time for words. We must
be doing."

And making a sign to Herrera to assist him, he caught hold of one end of
the heavy old-fashioned bedstead, which had been allotted to the use of
the wounded prisoner, and with the utmost cautio