The smoke duct led not into a cellar or into a blind hole, but instead, Jack, on alighting, had found himself, soot covered and scratched and torn, in a large open fireplace in a small room. As he made his sensational entrance there was a sudden sharp scream from a corner of the room and a female figure clad in white sprang up.
For an instant a dreadful fear that he had alighted in some sort of a trap flashed into Jack’s mind. But the next instant he realized that the alarmed girl was none other than the senorita, and that the room into which he had fallen was the one selected as her prison.
“Hush, senorita!” exclaimed the boy, as soon as he had given the signal to his comrades above that all was well, “do not fear me. I am not one of your enemies but a friend, an American. My companions are with me,—er—er—that is, they will be.”
“Oh, senor!” cried the girl in English, “what a dreadful fright you gave me. You—you, if you will excuse me, you are so black. I suppose it’s the soot in the chimney.”
Jack could hardly refrain from smiling, as, for the first time, he bethought himself of the alarming figure he must present.
“I’m not as black as I’m painted, senorita, really, I’m not. Nor are these two new arrivals chimney sweeps, but young American gentlemen,” he added with a sweeping bow, as Walt Phelps and Ralph popped out of the chimney. “Allow me to present myself. I am Jack Merrill, and these are my friends, Walt Phelps, of New Mexico, and Ralph Stetson, of New York. Not forgetting,” he added merrily, as the professor straightened up from an instinctive brushing of his clothes, “our instructor and—er—er—chaperone, Professor Wintergreen, of Stonefell College, and,” as the other member of the party appeared, “Mister Peter de Peyster, of the Merrill Ranch.”
“At your service, miss,” said Coyote Pete with a low, sweeping bow and a deep flourish of his sombrero, to which even in his fall he had clung.
“Oh, I feel safer now,” cried the girl delightedly, “but,” and she clasped her hands, “Madre de Dios, what I have passed through! I was summoned to my garden this evening by a decoy message, that one of the good sisters at the convent wished to see me. I had hardly set foot on the path when I was seized and carried off!”
“The rest of your story we know, senorita,” said Jack earnestly.