When next I awakened, it was to find myself abed in an elegant
apartment, spacious and sunlit, that was utterly strange to me.
For some seconds I was content to lie and take no count of my
whereabouts. My eyes travelled idly over the handsome furnishings
of that choicely appointed chamber, and rested at last upon the
lean, crooked figure of a man whose back was towards me and who
was busy with some phials at a table not far distant. Then
recollection awakened also in me, and I set my wits to work to
grapple with my surroundings. I looked through the open window,
but from my position on the bed no more was visible than the blue
sky and a faint haze of distant hills.

I taxed my memory, and the events of yesternight recurred to me.
I remembered the girl, the balcony, and my flight ending in my
giddiness and my fall. Had they brought me into that same chateau,
or - Or what? No other possibility came to suggest itself, and,
seeing scant need to tax my brains with speculation, since there
was one there of whom I might ask the question--

"Hola, my master!" I called to him, and as I did so I essayed to
move. The act wrung a sharp cry of pain from me. My left shoulder
was numb and sore, but in my right foot that sudden movement had
roused a sharper pang.

At my cry that little wizened old man swung suddenly round. He had
the face of a bird of prey, yellow as a louis d'or with a great
hooked nose, and a pair of beady black eyes that observed me solemnly.
The mouth alone was the redeeming feature in a countenance that had