He had the place so guarded that the burglar would have been a baffled burglar.

There are two steel shields which can slide out from the wall and lock into the other side right across the whole big window.
One is a grille of steel bands that open out into diamond-shaped lozenges.

Nothing bigger than a kitten could get through; and yet you can see the garden and the mountains and the whole view--much the same as you ladies can see through your veils.

The other is a great sheet of steel, which slides out in a similar way in different grooves.

It is not, of course, so heavy and strong as the safe-door which covers the little opening in the main wall, but Rooke tells me it is proof against the heaviest rifle-hall.
Having told you this, I must tell you, too, Aunt Janet, lest you should be made anxious by the _arriere-pensee_ of all these warlike measures of defence, that I always sleep at night with one of these iron screens across the window.