"Make way, good people, make way for the señorita who will soon be your mistress!" cried Don Carlos in Spanish, and those around stopped dancing to cheer.
Just as the couple were free of the crowd, all the electric lights, both in the castle and the courtyard, were suddenly extinguished, and at the same moment uproar broke out at the courtyard gates and shots were fired.
"The bandits! El Diablo Cojuelo and his men!" a voice screamed.
Instantly all was confusion. Women shrieked and ran in all directions in the darkness.
"I am here! Rally to your master, Don Carlos!" shouted Don Carlos.
"Rally to Don Carlos!"
Almost immediately he was surrounded, not by his own servants, but by a body of masked and armed men. Myra clung to his arm, but was snatched away from him, someone enveloped her head in a cloak, she was picked up in strong arms as if she were a baby and carried quickly for some distance. She struggled fiercely, but the cloak that enveloped her, to say nothing of her own fur coat, hampered her movements, and she was almost as helpless as an infant in the arms of its nurse.
Her captor halted for a moment, growled out some orders breathlessly in Spanish, and Myra found herself dumped down on the seat of a motor car, which immediately started off at a rapid rate. Half stifled, she tore the cloak from her face, and as she did so an arm encircled her.
"El Diablo Cojuelo has captured the prize of his lifetime!" said a deep voice triumphantly.
Myra's heart seemed to miss a beat as she felt the outlaw's arm tighten around her, panic seized her, and she had to fight the inclination to scream, and scream and scream.
"You are trembling, little lady," said the muffled voice of her captor.
"Do not be so sore afraid. I am not the fiend people make El Diablo
Cojuelo out to be, and will take care of so precious a treasure. Don
Carlos will ransom you, but perhaps when you have seen me and my
mountain nest you will not want to be ransomed."