The robbers reached the castle courtyard noiselessly, unnoticed, and each one at once took the place allotted to him, as Kandur had directed.
The silence of deep sleep reigned in the house.
When everyone was in his place, Kandur crept on his stomach among the bushes, which formed a grove under Czipra's window that looked on to the garden, and putting an acacia leaf into his mouth, began to imitate the song of the nightingale.
It was an artistic masterpiece which the wild son of the plains had, with the aid of a leaf, stolen from the mouth of the sweetest of song-birds.
All those fairy warblings, those plaintive challenging tones, those enchanting trills, which no one has ever written down, he could imitate so faithfully, so naturally, that he deceived even his lurking comrades.
"Cursed bird," they muttered, "it too has turned to whistling."
Czipra was sleeping peacefully.
That invisible hand, which she had sought, had closed her eyes and sent sweet dreams to her heart. Perhaps, had she been able to sleep that sleep through undisturbed, she would have awakened to a happy day.