So you have gone to the Spanish, have you, and thrown over your fat-faced burgher; well, you will have enough of Spaniards before you have done with them, I can tell you." Twice had Montalvo tried to stop this flood of furious eloquence, which had become personal and might prove prejudicial to his interests, but without avail.

Now he adopted other measures.
"Seize her," he shouted to two of the soldiers; "that's it; now hold her under water in that hole till I tell you to let her up again." They obeyed, but it took all three of them to carry out the order, for Black Meg fought and bit like a wild cat, until at last she was thrust into the icy moat head downwards.

When at length she was released, soaked and shivering, she crept off silently enough, but the look of fury which she cast at Montalvo and Lysbeth drew from the captain a remark that perhaps it would have been as well to have kept her under water two minutes longer.
"Now, sergeant," he added, in a genial voice, "it is a cold night, and this has been a troublesome business for a feast-day, so here's something for you and your watch to warm yourselves with when you go off duty," and he handed him what in those days was a very handsome present.
"By the way," he said, as the men saluted him gratefully, "perhaps you will do me a favour.

It is only to take this black horse of mine to his stable and harness that grey trooper nag to the sledge instead, as I wish to go the round of the moat, and my beast is tired." Again the men saluted and set to work to change the horses, whereon Lysbeth, guessing her cavalier's purpose, turned as though to fly away, for her skates were still upon her feet.

But he was watching.
"Senora," he said in a quiet voice, "I think that you gave me the promise of your company for the rest of this evening, and I am certain," he added with a slight bow, "that you are a lady whom nothing would induce to tell an untruth.