which I had walked on the previous day, reentering Cray's Folly on the
south, although we had left it on the north. We dismounted in the
stable-yard, and I noted two other saddle horses in the stalls, a pair
of very clean-looking hunters, as well as two perfectly matched ponies,
which, Jim informed me, Madame de Staemer sometimes drove in a chaise.

Feeling vastly improved by the exercise, I walked around to the
veranda, and through the drawing room to the hall. Manoel was standing
there, and:

"Your bath is ready, sir," he said.

I nodded and went upstairs. It seemed to me that life at Cray's Folly
was quite agreeable, and such was my mood that the shadowy Bat Wing
menace found no place in it save as the chimera of a sick man's
imagination. One thing only troubled me: the identity of the woman who
had been with Colonel Menendez on the previous night.

However, such unconscious sun worshippers are we all that in the glory
of that summer morning I realized that life was good, and I resolutely
put behind me the dark suspicions of the night.

I looked into Harley's room ere descending, and, as he had assured me
would be the case, there he was, propped up in bed, the _Daily
Telegraph_ upon the floor beside him and the _Times_ now open
upon the coverlet.

"I am ravenously hungry," I said, maliciously, "and am going down to
eat a hearty breakfast."