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Looking into the opening we saw a flight of a dozen stone steps. On the bottom step the sun shone brightly, and in our faces blew a draught of fresh, sweet air. On the rock, beside the stair-way was carved the King's symbol, with the arrow pointing downward. "Hurrah!" cried Young. "Here's a way out an' it looks as if that old monk an' th' Cacique weren't such a pair of blasted liars after all!"
Where will they enter?" "By the door." "Which door?" "That of the chamber giving on the servants' stair-way." "Why, how? The key! The bolt!" "They have made a key." "But the bolt is drawn this side." "They will draw it back from the other side." "What! That is impossible."
They could see the household servants hurrying hither and thither, two little scullions at fisticuffs, and a kitchen girl standing in the door-way scratching her frowzy head. It was all like a puppetshow of real life, each acting unconsciously a part in the play. The cool wind came in through the rustling leaves and fanned their cheeks, hot with the climb up the winding stair-way.
Suddenly he lowered his head, and turned eagerly his regard towards the corner of the court-yard where descended the stair-way from the gallery on which I stood; and from this quarter came towards him a smiling, pleasant-faced Indian lad of eighteen or twenty years old, whose dress was a cotton shirt and cotton trousers, whose feet were bare, and on whose head was a battered hat of straw.
The apartment was empty, and no echoes of the words just spoken were lingering. A little later Miss Burton came down the main stair-way in her breezy, cheery manner, and his jealous fears were quieted. He joined her at once, saying that it was the unanimous wish that she should give them some music again that evening.
So in a moment she comes rushing down along the stair-way, like a branch that is blown suddenly from the top o' a tall tree, and so into Lord Robert's arms; and he catches her to his heart, and so stands holding her; and they make no motion nor any sound whatever. Then turns the earl away, and leaves them together. But I marked that his eyes were brimming, and that there was a quiver in his lip.
The entrance-hall was very much like any other entrance-hall; so, likewise, was the broad stair-way; so, also, the upper landing. It was only when Mr. Ingelow, pausing before one of the doors in the second hall, spoke, that Mollie received her first shock. "You will enter here, Mollie, and wait. Prepare yourself for a great surprise a terrible surprise, perhaps."
I clattered up the long street of the town to the Club House, where I found a company of English friends. In the evening, Jose made his appearance, to settle our accounts and take his leave of me. While scrambling down the rocky stair-way of Gaucin, Jose had said to me: "Look you, Senor, I am very fond of English beer, and if I get you to Gibraltar to day you must give me a glass of it."
It is a puzzle to me to this day how El Sabio managed to shrink himself so that we got him through that narrow hole; but he certainly did manage it and then went down the stone stair-way backward, as though he had been trained to be a trick donkey from his youth up.
"Ho! thou little cinder witch," cried he; "I am the prince that has found thy shoe, and when I shall have found thee, if that thy temper be as small as thy shoe, fear not but that I will kiss thee too!" With that, he ran up the stair-way, two and three steps at a leap. But when he was arrived at the top, lo! they had both fled, neither had they left so much as a ribbon behind them.
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