"No preamble, Talabor!" said Dora, who looked more cheerful every moment. "Make any remarks you wish, and I will hear you out, because I know you don't speak from fear."
"Well, lady, wouldn't it be better to keep Jakó with you, instead of Gábor? Gábor is a good, trusty fellow and active, but he is not equal to Jakó."
"I am not going to keep more than one with me, and that is yourself, Talabor! For safety's sake I must travel on foot, like a pilgrim, and with as few followers as possible. Why I am keeping Gábor is that I want to send him to seek my father by one route, while we take another. Jakó is the only one of the others who is capable of thinking and acting for them. If I take him they have no one. Don't you think, now, that I am right?"
Talabor assented, and no more was said, but when he realised that he was to be Dora's sole guardian and travelling companion, he felt as if he had the strength of a young lion.
That same evening, Moses the governor, and all the rest, with the above-mentioned exceptions, quitted the castle; and by dawn of the following day, Master Peter's ancient dwelling-house was like a silent sepulchre. All the doors and windows were open, but the drawbridge was up, and the moat full of water.
The most valuable articles of furniture of a size to be moved, Talabor had helped Gábor to carry down to a vault opening out of the cellar, in the course of the night, and together they had walled them up.
As to what had become of Dora and the two men, no one knew but Moses. Some thought that she was still there, and others that she had "left the country," as they said in those days, though how she could have crossed the moat, except by the drawbridge, and how, if she had done so, the drawbridge could have been pulled up again, was a mystery which none could fathom.
Not even Talabor had ever known of the subterranean passage, which Master Peter had shown to his daughter and to no one else; and even now Dora did not disclose its whereabouts. Blindfold, her companions were led through it, she herself guiding Talabor, and he Gábor; and when she allowed them to take the bandages off their eyes, they were out of sight of the castle, and could see not the slightest sign of any secret entrance. They were in a diminutive valley, with rocks and cliffs all about them; and here Dora gave Gábor, the horseman, a small purse, which, had she but known it, was likely to be of small assistance in a wilderness where no one had anything to sell, but where there were plenty of people ready to take any money they could get hold of.
Dora told the man to travel only by night, to avoid all the high roads, and to make for Dalmatia, where he had been once before in charge of a horse which Master Peter was sending to a friend. He remembered the way well enough, which was one reason why Dora had chosen him for this dangerous and almost impossible mission.