Chapter III (1)

Although crushed in the rear and broken inwards there, the hut showed its ordinary face to the path as Mercedes reached it in the failing daylight. She ran like a madwoman, and with short, distraught cries, as she neared her home. Her eyes were wild as a hunted creature's, her coarse black hair streamed over her shoulders, her bare feet bled where the rocks and ice had cut them. But one thing she did not doubt--would not allow herself to doubt--that at home she would find her child. For two days she had been parted from him, and in those two days ... God had been good to her, very good: but she could not thank God yet--not until she clutched Sebastianillo in her arms, held his small, wriggling body, felt his feet kick against her breast....

The great sty beside the cabin was empty, of course: and the cabin itself looked strange to her and desolate and unfriendly. For some hours the snow had ceased falling, and, save in a snowstorm or a gale, it was not the family custom to close door or window before dark: indeed, the window-hole usually stood open night and day the year round. Now both were closed. But warm firelight showed under the chink of the door; and on the door she bowed her head, to take breath, and beat with her hands while she called urgently--

"Mother! Quickly, mother--open to me for the love of God!"

No answer came from within.

"Mother! Father! Open to me--it is I, Mercedes!"

Then, after listening a moment, she began to beat again, frantically, for at length she was afraid.

"Quick! Quick! Ah, do not be playing a trick on me: I want my child--Sebastianillo!"

Again and again she called and beat. No answer came from the hut or from the sombre twilight around her. She drew back, to fling her full weight against the door. And at this moment she heard, some way down the path, a man's footstep crunching the snow.

She never doubted that this must be her father returning up the mountain-side, perhaps after a search for her. What other man--now that her husband had gone soldiering--ever trod this path? She ran down to meet him.

The path, about forty yards below, rounded an angle of the sheer cliff, and at this angle she came to a terrified halt. The man, too, had halted a short gunshot away. He did not see her, but was staring upward at the cliff overhead; and he was not her father. For an instant there flashed across her brain an incredible surmise--that he was her husband, Sebastian: for he wore a soldier's overcoat and shako, and carried a musket and knapsack. But no: this man was taller than Sebastian by many inches; taller and thinner.

He was a soldier, then: and to Mercedes all soldiers were by this time incarnate devils--or all but one, and that one a plucky little British officer who had snatched her from his men just as she fell swooning into their clutches, and had dragged and thrust her through the convent doorway at Nogales and slammed the door upon her; and (though this she did not know) held the doorstep, sword in hand, while the Fathers within shot the heavy bolts.

The British had gone, and after them--close after--came the French: and these broke down the convent door and ransacked the place. But the Fathers had hidden her and a score or so more of trembling women, nor would allow her to creep out and search for Sebastianillo in the streets through which swept, hour after hour, a flood of drunken yelling devils. So now Mercedes, who had left home two days ago to watch an army pass, turned from this one soldier with a scream and ran back towards the cabin.

In her terror lest he should overtake and catch her by the closed door, she darted aside, clambered across the wall of the empty sty, and crouched behind it in the filth, clutching at her bodice: for within her bodice was a knife, which she had borrowed of the Fathers at Nogales.

The footsteps came up the path and went slowly past her hiding-place. Then they came to a halt before the hut. Still Mercedes crouched, not daring to lift her head.

_Rat, rat-a-tat!_

Well, let him knock. Her father was a strong man, and always kept a loaded gun on the shelf. If this soldier meant mischief, he would find his match: and she, too, could help.

She heard him call to the folks within once or twice in bad Spanish. Then his voice changed and seemed to threaten in a language she did not know.

Her hand was thrust within her bodice now, and gripped the handle of her knife; nevertheless, what followed took her by surprise, though ready for action. A terrific bang sounded on the timbers of the door. Involuntarily she raised her head above the wall's coping. The man had stepped back a pace into the path, and was swinging his musket up for another blow with the butt.

She stood up, white, with her jaw set. Her father could not be inside the hut, or he would have answered that blow on his door as a man should. But Sebastianillo might be within--nay, must be! She put her hands to the wall's coping and swung herself over and on to the path, again unseen, for the dusk hid her, and a dark background of cliff behind the sty: nor could the man hear, for he was raining blow after blow upon the door. At length, having shaken it loose from its hasp, he stepped back and made a run at it, using the butt of his musket for a ram, and finishing up the charge with the full weight of one shoulder. The door crashed open before him, and he reeled over it into the hut. A second later, Mercedes had sprung after him.

"Sebastianillo! You shall not harm him! You shall not----"

The door, falling a little short of the fire, had scattered some of the burning brands about the floor and fanned the rest into a blaze. In the light of it he faced round with a snarl, his teeth showing beneath his moustache. The light also showed--though Mercedes neither noted it nor could have read its signification--a corporal's chevron on his sleeve.

"Who the devil are you?" The snarl ended in a snap.

Mercedes stood swaying on the threshold, knife in hand.

"You shall not harm him!"

She spoke in her own tongue and he understood it, after a fashion; for he answered in broken Spanish, catching up her word--

"Harm? Who means any harm? When a man is perishing with hunger and folks will not open to him----"

He paused, wondering at her gaze. Travelling past him, it had fastened itself on the back wall of the hut, across the fire. "Hullo! What's the matter?" He swung round. "Good Lord!" said he, with a gulp.

He sprang past the fire and stooped over the old man's body, which lay face downward on the shelving heap of silver. It did not stir. By-and-by he took it by one of the rigid arms and turned it over, not roughly.

"Warm," said he: "warm, but dead as a herring! Come and see for yourself."

Mercedes did not move. Her eyes sought the dark corners of the cabin, fixed themselves for a moment on the shattered image of the Virgin, and met his across the firelight in desperate inquiry.

"What is this? What have you done?"

"Done? I tell you I never touched the man; never saw him before in my life. Who is he? Your father? No: grandfather, more like. Eh? Am I right?"

She bent her head, staring at the money.

"This? This is dollars, my girl: dollars enough to set a man up for life, with a coach and lads in livery, and dress you in diamonds from head to heel. Don't stand playing with that knife. I tell you I never touched the old man. What's more, I'm willing to be friendly and go shares." He stared at her with quick suspicion. "You're alone here, hey?"

She did not answer.

"But answer me," he insisted, "do you live alone with him?" And he pointed to the body at his feet.

"There was my mother," said Mercedes slowly, in her turn pointing to the third bed of straw by the fire. "We journeyed over to Nogales, she and I. Your soldiers came and took away our pigs, giving us pieces of paper for them. They said that if we took these to Nogales someone would pay us: so we started, leaving _him_. And at Nogales your men were rough and parted us, and I have not seen her since."

The Corporal eyed her with the beginnings of a leer. She faced him with steady eyes. "Well, well," said he, after a pause, "I mean no harm to you, anyway. Lord! but you're in luck. Here you reach home and find a fortune at your door--a sort of fortune a man can dig into with a spade; while a poor devil like me----" He paused again and stood considering.

"You knew about this?" She nodded towards the dollars. "You knew how it came here, and you came after it?"

"I did and I didn't. I knew 'twas somewhere hereabouts; but strike me, if a man could dream of finding it like this!"

"Yet you came to this door and beat it open!"

"You've wits, my girl," said the Corporal admiringly; "but they are on the wrong tack. I mean no harm; and the best proof is that here I'm standing with a loaded musket and not offering to hurt you. As it happens, I came to the door asking a bite of bread. I'm cruel hungry."

Mercedes pulled a crust of millet-bread from her pocket. The Fathers at the convent had given it to her at parting, but she had forgotten to eat. She stepped forward; the Corporal stretched out a hand.

"No," said she, and, avoiding him, laid the crust on the block-table. He caught it up and gnawed it ravenously. "I think there is no other food in the house."

"You don't get rid of me like that." He ran a hand along the shelves, searching them. "Hullo! a gun?" He took it down and examined it beside the fire, while Mercedes' heart sank. She had hoped to possess herself of it, snatching it from the shelf when he should be off his guard. "Loaded, too!" He laid it gently on the block and eyed her, munching his crust.

"You'd best put down that knife and talk friendly," said he at length. "What's the use?--you a woman, and me with two guns, both loaded? It's silliness; you must see for yourself it is. Now look here: I've a notion--a splendid notion. Come sit down alongside of me, and talk it over. I promise you there's no harm meant."

But she had backed to her former position in the doorway and would not budge.

"It's treating me suspicious, you are," he grumbled: "hard _and_ suspicious."

"Cannot you take the money and go?" she begged, breathing hard, speaking scarcely above a whisper.

"No, I can't: it stands to reason I can't. What can I do in a country like this with dollars it took two carts to drag here--two carts with six yoke of bullocks apiece? And that's where my cruel luck comes in. All I can take, as things are, is just so much as this knapsack will carry: and even for this I've run some risks."

The man--it was the effect of hunger, perhaps, and exposure and drunkenness on past marches--had an ugly, wolfish face; but his eyes, though cunning, were not altogether evil, not quite formidably evil. She divined that, though lust for the money was driving him, some weakness lay behind it.

"You are a deserter," she said.

"We'll pass that." He seated himself, flinging a leg over the block and laying the two guns side by side on his knees. "I can win back, maybe. As things go, between stragglers and deserters it's hard to choose in these times, and I'll get the benefit of the doubt. I've taken some risks," he repeated, glancing from the guns on his knees to the pile of silver and back: "pretty bad risks, and only to fill my knapsack. But, now it strikes me----Can't you come closer?"

But she held her ground and waited.

"It strikes me, why couldn't we collar the whole of this, we two? We're alone: no one knows; I've but to lift one of these"--he tapped the guns--"and where would you be? But I don't do it. I don't want to do it. You hear me?"

"You don't do it," said Mercedes slowly, "because without me you can't get away with more than a handful of this money. And you want the whole of it."

"You're a clever girl. Yes, I want the whole of it. Who wouldn't? And you can help. Can't you see how?"

"No."

He sat swinging his legs. "Well, that's where my notion comes in. I wish you'd drop that knife and be friendly: it's a fortune I'm offering you. Now my notion is that we two ought to marry." He stood up.

Mercedes lifted the knife with its point turned inward against her breast. "If you take another step!"

"Oh, but look here: look at it every way. I like you. You're a fine build of a woman, with plenty of spirit--the very woman to help a man. We should get along famously. One country's as good as another to me: I'm tired of soldiering, and there's no woman at home, s'help me!" He was speaking rapidly now, not waiting to cast about for words in Spanish, but falling back on English whenever he found himself at a loss. "I dare say you can fit me out with a suit of clothes." His glance ran round the hut and rested on the body of the old man.

Mercedes had understood scarce half of his words: but she divined the meaning of that look and shuddered.

"No, no; you cannot do that!"

"Hark!" said he raising his head and listening. "What's that noise?"

"The wolves. We hear them every night in winter."

"A nice sort of place for a woman to live alone in! See here, my dear; it's sense I'm talking. Better fix it up with me and say 'yes.'"

She appeared to be considering this. "One thing you must promise."

"Well?"

"You won't touch him"--she nodded towards her grandfather's corpse. "You won't touch him to--to----"

"Is it strip him you mean? Very well, then, I won't."

"You will help me to bury him? He cannot lie here. I can give you no answer while he lies here."

"Right you are, again. Only, no tricks, mind!"

He stowed the guns under his left arm and gripped the collar of the old man. Mercedes took the feet; and together they bore him out--a light burden enough. Outside the hut a pale radiance lay over all the snow, forerunner of the moon now rising over the crags across the ravine.

"Where?" grunted the Corporal.

Mercedes guided him. A little way down the path, beyond the wall of the sty, they came to a recess in the base of the cliff where the wind's eddies had piled a smooth mound of snow. Here, under a jutting rock, they laid the body.

"Cover him as best you can," the Corporal ordered. "My hands are full."

He stood, clasping his guns, and watched Mercedes while she knelt and shovelled the snow with both hands. Yet always her eyes were alert and she kept her knife ready. From their mound they looked down upon the ravine in front and over the wall of the sty towards the cabin. Behind them rose the black cliff.

"Hark to the wolves!" said the Corporal, listening: and at that moment something thudded down from the cliff, striking the snow a few yards from him; rolled heavily down the slope and came to a standstill against the wall of the sty, where it lay bedded.

The round moon had risen over the ravine, and was flooding the mound with light. The Corporal stared at Mercedes: for the moment he could think of nothing but that a large, loose stone had dropped from the cliff. He ran to the thing and turned it over.

It was a knapsack.

He did not at once understand, but stepped back a few paces and gazed up at the crags mounting tier by tier into the vague moonlight. And while he gazed a lighter object struck the wall over head, glanced from it, went spinning by him, and disappeared over the edge of the ravine. As it passed he recognized it--a soldier's shako.

Then he understood. Someone had found the spot on the road above where the treasure had been upset, and these things were being dropped to guide his search. The Corporal ran to Mercedes and would have clutched her by the wrist. The knife flashed in her hand as she evaded him.

"Quick, my girl--back with you, quick! They're after the money, I tell you!"

He caught up the knapsack. They ran back together and flung themselves into the cabin. The Corporal bolted the door.

"King's Own," he announced, having dragged the knapsack to the firelight. "If there's only one, we'll do for him."

He stepped to the window-hole, pulled open the shutter, laid the two guns on the ledge, and waited, straining his ears.

"Got such a thing as a shovel or a mattock?" he asked after a while. "I reckon you could make shift to cover up the dollars: there's a deal of loose earth come down with them."

It took her some time to guess what he wanted, for he spoke in a hoarse whisper. He listened again for a while, then pointed to the treasure.

"Cover it up. If there's more than one, we'll have trouble."

She produced a mattock from a corner of the cabin and began, through the broken wall, to rake down mud and earth and cover the coins. For an hour and more she worked, the Corporal still keeping watch. Once or twice he growled at her to make less noise.

He did not stand the suspense well, but after the first hour grew visibly uneasy.

"I've a mind to give this over," he grumbled, and fell to unstrapping his knapsack. "Here!"--he tossed it to her--"pack it, full as you can. Half a loaf may turn out better than no bread."

She laid the knapsack open on the floor and set to work, cramming it with dollars.

"Talking of bread," he went on by-and-by, "that's going to be a question. My stomach's feeling at this moment like as if it had two rows of teeth inside."

"Hist!" Mercedes rose, finger to lip. He turned again to the window-hole and peered out, gun in hand, his shoulder blocking the recess.

A man's footsteps were coming up the path--coming cautiously. Their crunch upon the snow was just audible, and no more. Mercedes stole towards the window and crept close behind the Corporal's back; stood there, holding her breath.

The man on the path halted for a moment, and came on again, still cautiously.... There was a jet of flame, a roar; and the Corporal, after the kick of his musket, strained himself forward on the window-ledge to see if his shot had told.

"Settled him!" he announced, drawing back and turning to face her with a triumphant grin.

But Mercedes confronted him with her father's fowling-piece in hand. She had slipped it off the window-ledge from under his elbow as he leaned forward.

"Unbar the door!" she commanded.

"Look here, no nonsense!"

"Unbar the door!" She believed him to be a coward, and he was.

"You just wait a bit, my lady!" he threatened, but drew the bolt, nevertheless; when he turned, the muzzle of the fowling-piece still covered him.

She nodded toward the knapsack. "Pick up that, if you will.... Now turn your back--your back to me, if you please--and go."

He hesitated, rebellious: but there was no help for it.

"Go!" she repeated. And he went.

Above the cabin the path ended almost at once in a _cul de sac_--a wall of frowning cliff. There was no way for him, whether he wished to descend or climb the mountain, but that which led him past the body of the man he had just murdered. He went past it tottering, fumbling with the straps of his knapsack: and Mercedes stood in the moonlit doorway and watched him out of sight.

By-and-by she seated herself before the threshold, and, laying the gun across her knees, prepared herself to wait for the dawn. The dead man lay huddled on his side, a few paces from her. Overhead, along the waste mountain heights, the wolves howled.

Hours passed. Still the wolves howled, and once from the upper darkness Mercedes heard, or fancied that she heard, a scream.

* * * * *

At noon, next day, two men--a priest and a young peasant--were climbing the mountain-path leading to the hut. The young man carried on his shoulder a two-year-old child; and, because the sun shone and the crisp air put a spirit of life into all things untroubled by thought, the child crowed and tugged gleefully at his father's _berret_. But his father paid no heed, and strode forward at a pace which forced the priest (who was stout) now and again into a run.

"She will not be there," he kept repeating, steeling himself against the worst. "She cannot be there. When she missed her child----"

"She is waiting on her grandfather, belike," urged the priest. "They left him with one day's food: so she told the Brothers. And they, like fools, let her go with just sufficient for her own needs. Yet I ought not to blame them for losing their heads in so small a matter. They saved many women."

He told again how he--the parish priest of Nogales--had found Gil the Younger and his wife dead and drunken, with their heads in a gutter and the child wailing in the mud beside them. "Your wife had given her mother the child to guard but a minute before she fell in with the soldiers. A young officer saved her, the Brothers said."

"Mercedes will have sought her child first," persisted Sebastian; and rounding the corner of the cliff, they came in sight of the hut and of her whom they sought.

She sat in the path before it, still with the fowling-piece across her knees. But to reach her they had to pass the body of a soldier lying with clenched hands in a crimson patch of snow. The child, who had passed by many horrors on the road, and all with gay unconcern, stretched out his arms across this one, recognising his mother at once, and kicking in his father's clasp.

She raised her eyes dully. She was too weak even to move. "I knew you would come," she said in a whisper; and with that her eyes shifted and settled on the body in the path.

"Take him away! I--I did not kill him."

Her husband set down the child. "Run indoors, little one: you shall kiss mamma presently."

He bent over her, and, unstringing a small wine-skin from his belt, held the mouth of it to her lips. The priest stooped over the dead man, on whose collar the figures "28" twinkled in the sunlight. The child, for a moment rebellious, toddled towards the doorway of the hut.

Mercedes' eyelids had closed: but some of the wine found its way down her throat, and as it revived her, they flickered again.

"Sebastian," she whispered.

"Be at rest, dear wife. It is I, Sebastian."

"I did not kill him."

"I hear. You did not kill him."

"The child?"

"He is safe--safe and sound," he assured her, and called, "Sebastianillo!"

For a moment there was no answer: but as he lifted Mercedes and carried her into the hut, on its threshold the boy met them, his both hands dropping silver dollars.

THE LAMP AND THE GUITAR

[FROM THE MEMOIRS OF MANUEL, OR MANUS, MacNEILL, AN AGENT IN THE
SECRET SERVICE OF GREAT BRITAIN DURING THE PENINSULAR CAMPAIGNS OF
1808-13.]

I have not the precise date in 1811 when Fuentes and I set out for Salamanca, but it must have been either in the third or fourth week of July.

In Portugal just then Lord Wellington was fencing, so to speak, with the points of three French armies at once. On the south he had Soult, on the north Dorsenne, and between them Marmont's troops were scattered along the valley of the Tagus, with Madrid as their far base. Being solidly concentrated, by short and rapid movements he could keep these three armies impotent for offence; but _en revanche_, he could make no overmastering attack upon any one of them. If he advanced far against Soult or against Dorsenne he must bring Marmont down on his flank, left or right; while, if he reached out and struck for the Tagus Valley, Marmont could borrow from right and left without absolutely crippling his colleagues, and roll up seventy thousand men to bar the road on Madrid. In short, the opposing armies stood at a deadlock, and there were rumours that Napoleon, who was pouring troops into Spain from the north, meant to follow and take the war into his own hands.

Now, the strength and the weakness of the whole position lay with Marmont; while the key of it, curiously enough, was Ciudad Rodrigo, garrisoned by Dorsenne--as in due time appeared. For the present, Wellington, groping for the vital spot, was learning all that could be learnt about Marmont's strength, its disposition, and (a matter of first importance) its victualling, Spain being a country where large armies starve. How many men were being drafted down from the north? How was Marmont scattering his cantonments to feed them? What was the state of the harvest? What provisions did Salamanca contain? And what stores were accumulating at Madrid, Valladolid, Burgos?

I had just arrived at Lisbon in a _chassemarée_ of San Sebastian, bringing a report of the French troops, which for a month past had been pouring across the bridge of Irun: and how I had learnt this is worth telling. There was a cobbler, Martinez by name--a little man with a green shade over his eyes--who plied his trade in a wooden hutch at the end of the famous bridge. While he worked he counted every man, horse, standard, wagon, or gun that passed, and forwarded the numbers without help of speech or writing (for he could not even write his own name). He managed it all with his hammer, tapping out a code known to our fellows who roamed the shore below on the pretence of hunting for shellfish, but were prevented by the French cordon from getting within sight of the bridge. As for Martinez, the French Generals themselves gossipped around his hutch while he cobbled industriously at the soldiers' shoes.

I had presented my report to Lord Wellington, who happened to be in Lisbon quarrelling with the Portuguese Government and re-embarking (apparently for Cadiz) a battering train of guns and mortars which had just arrived from England: and after two days' holiday I was spending an idle morning in a wine-shop by the quay, where the proprietor, a fervid politician, kept on file his copies of the Government newspaper, the _Lisbon Gazette_. A week at sea had sharpened my appetite for news; and I was wrapped in study of the _Gazette_ when an orderly arrived from headquarters with word that Lord Wellington requested my attendance there at once.

I found him in conference with a handsome, slightly built man--a Spaniard by his face--who stepped back as I entered, but without offering to retire. Instead, he took up his stand with his back to one of the three windows overlooking the street, and so continued to observe me, all the while keeping his own face in shade.

The General, as his habit was, came to business at once.

"I have sent for you," said he, "on a serious affair. Our correspondents in Salamanca have suddenly ceased to write."

"If your Excellency's correspondents are the same as the Government's," said I, "'tis small wonder," and I glanced at the newspaper in his hand--a copy of the same _Gazette_ I had been reading.

"Then you also think this is the explanation?" He held out the paper with the face of a man handling vermin.

"The Government publishes its reports, the English newspapers copy them: these in turn reach Paris; the Emperor reads them: and," concluded I, with a shrug, "your correspondents cease to write, probably for the good reason that they are dead."

"That is just what I want you to find out," said he.

"Your Excellency wishes me to go to Salamanca? Very good. And, supposing these correspondents to be dead?"

"You will find others."

"That may not be easy: nevertheless, I can try. Your Excellency, by the way, will allow me to promise that future reports are not for publication?"

Wellington smiled grimly, doubtless from recollection of a recent interview with Silveira and the Portuguese Ministry. "You may rest assured of that," said he; and added: "There may be some delay, as you suggest, in finding fresh correspondents: and it is very necessary for me to know quickly how Salamanca stands for stores."

"Then I must pick up some information on my own account."

"The service will be hazardous----"

"Oh, as for that----" I put in, with another shrug.

"--and I propose to give you a companion," pursued Wellington, with a half-turn toward the man in the recess of the window. "This is Señor Fuentes. You are not acquainted, I believe?--as you ought to be."

Now from choice I have always worked alone: and had the General uttered any other name I should have been minded to protest, with the old Greek, that two were not enough for an army, while for any other purpose they were too many. But on hearsay the performances of this man Fuentes and his methods and his character had for months possessed a singular fascination for me. He was at once a strolling guitar-player and a licentiate of the University of Salamanca, a consorter with gypsies, and by birth a pure-blooded Castilian hidalgo. Some said that patriotism was a passion with him; with a face made for the love of women, he had a heart only for the woes of Spain. Others averred that hatred of the French was always his master impulse; that they, by demolishing the colleges of his University, and in particular his own beloved College of San Lorenzo, had broken his heart and first driven him to wander. Rewards he disdained; dangers he laughed at: his feats in the service had sometimes a touch of high comedy and always a touch of heroic grace. In short, I believe that if Spain had held a poet in those days, Fuentes would have passed into song and lived as one of his country's demigods.

He came forward now with a winning smile and saluted me cordially, not omitting a handsome compliment on my work. You could see that the man had not an ounce of meanness in his nature.

"We shall be friends," said he, turning to the Commander-in-Chief. "And that will be to the credit of both, since Señor MacNeill has an objection to comrades."

"I never said so."

"Excuse me, but I have studied your methods."

"Well, then," I replied, "I had the strongest objection, but you have made me forget it--as you have forgotten your repugnance to visit Salamanca." For although Fuentes flitted up and down and across Spain like a will-o'-the-wisp, I had heard that he ever avoided the city where he had lived and studied.

His fine eyes clouded, and he muttered some Latin words as it were with a voice indrawn.

"I beg your pardon?" put in Wellington sharply.

"Cecidit, cecidit Salmantica illa fortis," Fuentes repeated.

"'Cecidit'--ah! I see--a quotation. Yes, they are knocking the place about: as many as fifteen or sixteen colleges razed to the ground." He opened the newspaper again and ran his eyes down the report. "You'll excuse me: in England we have our own way of pronouncing Latin, and for the moment I didn't quite catch----Yes, sixteen colleges; a clean sweep! But before long, Señor Fuentes, we'll return the compliment upon their fortifications."

"That must be my consolation, your Excellency," Fuentes made answer with a smile which scarcely hid its irony.

The General began to discuss our route: our precautions he left to us. He was well aware of the extreme risk we ran, and once again made allusion to it as he dismissed us.

"If that were all your Excellency demanded!"

Fuentes' gaiety returned as we found ourselves in the street. "We shall get on together like a pair of schoolboys," he assured me. "We understand each other, you and I. But oh, those islanders!"

* * * * *

We left Lisbon that same evening on muleback, taking the road for Abrantes. So universally were the French hated that the odds were we might have dispensed with precautions at this stage, and indeed for the greater part of the journey. The frontier once passed we should be travelling in our native country--Fuentes as a gypsy and I as an Asturian, moving from one harvest-job to another. We carried no compromising papers: and if the French wanted to arrest folks on mere suspicion they had the entire population to practise on. Nevertheless, having ridden north-east for some leagues beyond Abrantes--on the direct road leading past Ciudad Rodrigo to Salamanca--we halted at Amendoa, bartered one of our mules for a couple of skins of wine and ten days' provisions, and, having made our new toilet in a chestnut grove outside the town, headed back for the road leading east through Villa Velha into the Tagus valley.

Beyond the frontier we were among Marmont's cantonments: but these lay scattered, and we avoided them easily. Keeping to the hill-tracks on the northern bank of the river, and giving a wide berth to the French posts in front of Alcantara, we struck away boldly for the north through the Sierras: reached the Alagon, and, following up its gorges, crossed the mountains in the rear of Bejar, where a French force guarded the military pass.

So far we had travelled unmolested, if toilsomely; and a pleasanter comrade than Fuentes no man could ask for. His gaiety never failed him: yet it was ever gentle, and I suspected that it covered either a native melancholy or some settled sorrow--sorrow for his country, belike--but there were depths he never allowed me to sound. He did everything well, from singing a love-song to tickling a trout and cooking it for our supper: and it was after such a supper, as we lay and smoked on a heathery slope beyond Bejar, that he unfolded his further plans.

"My friend", said he, "there were once two brothers, students of Salamanca, and not far removed in age. Of these the elder was given to love-making and playing on the guitar; while the other stuck to his books--which was all the more creditable because his eyes were weak. I hope you are enjoying this story?"

"It begins to be interesting."

"Yet these two brothers--they were nearly of one height, by the way--obtained their bachelor's degrees, and in time their licentiates, though as rewards for different degrees of learning. They were from Villacastin, beyond Avila in Old Castille: but their father, a hidalgo of small estates there, possessed also a farm and the remains of a castle across the frontier in the kingdom of Leon, a league to the west of Salvatierra on the Tormes. It had come to him as security for a loan which was never paid: and, dying, he left this property to his younger son Andrea. Now when the French set a Corsican upon the throne of our kingdoms, these two brothers withdrew from Salamanca; but while Andrea took up his abode on his small heritage, and gave security for his good behaviour, Eugenio, the elder, turned his back on the paternal home (which the French had ravaged), and became a rebel, a nameless, landless man and a wanderer, with his guitar for company. You follow me?"

"I follow you, Señor Don Eugenio----"

"Not 'de Fuentes,'" he put in with a smile. "The real name you shall read upon certain papers and parchments of which I hope to possess myself to-night. In short, my friend, since we are on the way to Salamanca, why should I not apply there for my doctor's degree?"

"It requires a thesis, I have always understood."

"That is written."

"May I ask upon what subject?"

"The fiend take me if I know yet! But it is written, safe enough."

"Ah, I see! We go to Salvatierra? Yes, yes, but what of me, who know scarcely any Latin beyond my _credo_?"

"Why, that is where I feel a certain delicacy. Having respect to your rank, _caballero_, I do not like to propose that you should become my servant."

"I am your servant already, and for a week past I have been an Asturian. It will be promotion."

He sprang up gaily. "What a comrade is mine!" he cried, flinging away the end of his cigarette. "To Salvatierra, then--Santiago, and close Spain!"

Darkness overtook us as we climbed down the slopes: but we pushed on, Fuentes leading the way boldly. Evidently he had come to familiar ground. But it was midnight before he brought me, by an abominable road, to a farmstead the walls of which showed themselves ruinous even in the starlight--for moon there was none. At an angle of the building, which once upon a time had been whitewashed, rose a solid tower, with a doorway and an iron-studded door, and a narrow window overlooking it. In spite of the hour, Fuentes advanced nonchalantly and began to bang the door, making noise enough to wake the dead. The window above was presently opened--one could hear, with a shaking hand. "Who is there?" asked a man's voice no less tremulous. "Who are you, for the love of God?"

"_Gente de paz_, my dear brother!--not your friends the French. I hope, by the way, you are entertaining none."

"I have been in bed these four hours or five. 'Peace,' say you? I wish you would take your own risks and leave me in peace! What is it you want, this time?"

"'Tis a good six weeks, brother, since my last visit: and, as you know, I never call without need."

"Well, what is it you need?"

"I need," said Fuentes with great gravity, "the loan of your spectacles."

"Be serious, for God's sake! And do not raise your voice so: the French may be following you----"

"Dear Andrea, and if the French were to hear it, surely mine is an innocent request. A pair of spectacles!"

"The French----" began Don Andrea and broke off, peering down short-sightedly into the courtyard. "Ah, there is someone else! Who is it? Who is it you have there in the darkness?"

"_Dios!_ A moment since you were begging for silence, and now you want me to call out my friend's name--to who knows what ears? He has a mule, here, and I--oh yes, beside the spectacles I shall require a horse: a horse, and--let me see--a treatise."

"Have you been drinking, brother?"

"No: and, since you mention it, a cup of wine, too, would not come amiss. Is this a way to treat the _caballero_ my friend? For the honour of the family, brother, step down and open the door."

Don Andrea closed the window, and by-and-by we heard the bolts withdrawn, one by one--and they were heavy. The door opened at length, and a thin man in a nightcap peered out upon us with an oil-lamp held aloft over the hand shading his eyes.

"You had best call Juan," said his brother easily, "and bid him stable the mule. For the remainder of the night we are your guests; and, to ensure our sleeping well, you shall fetch out the choicest of the theses you have composed for your doctorate and read us a portion over our wine."

We lay that night, after a repast of thin wine and chestnuts, in a spare chamber, and on beds across the feet of which the rats scudded. I did not see Don Andrea again: but his brother, who had risen betimes, awakened me from uneasy slumber and showed me his spoil. Sure enough it included a pair of spectacles and a bulky roll of manuscript, a leathern jerkin, a white shirt, and a pair of velvet-fustian breeches, tawny yellow in hue and something the worse for wear. Below-stairs, in the courtyard, we found a white-haired retainer waiting, with his grip on the bridles of my mule and a raw-boned grey mare.

"The _caballero_ will bring them back when he has done with them?" said this old man as I mounted. The request puzzled me for a moment until I met his eyes and found them fastened wistfully on my breeches.

Assuredly Fuentes was an artist. Besides the spectacles, which in themselves transformed him, he had borrowed a broad-brimmed hat and a rusty black sleeveless _mancha_, which, by the way he contrived it to hang, gave his frame an extraordinary lankiness. But his final and really triumphant touch was simply a lengthening of the stirrups, so that his legs dangled beneath the mare's belly like a couple of ropes with shoes attached. If Don Andrea watched us out of sight from his tower--as I doubt not he did--his emotions as he recognised his portrait must have been lively.

In this guise we ambled steadily all day along the old Roman road leading to Salamanca, and came within sight of the city as the sun was sinking. It stood on the eastern bank of the river, fronting the level rays, its walls rising tier upon tier, its towers and cupolas of cream-coloured stone bathed in gold, with recesses of shadowy purple. A bridge of twenty-five or six arches spanned the cool river-beds, and towards this we descended between cornfields, of which the light swept the topmost ears while the stalks stood already in twilight. Truly it was a noble city yet, and so I cried aloud to Fuentes. But his eyes, I believe, saw only what the French had marred or demolished.

A group of their soldiery idled by the bridge-end, waiting for the guard to be relieved, and lolled against the parapet watching the bathers, whose shouts came up to me from the chasm below. But instead of riding up and presenting our passes, Fuentes, a furlong from the bridge, turned his mare's head to the left and reined up at the door of a small riverside tavern.

The innkeeper--a brisk, athletic man, with the air of a retired servant--appeared at the door as we dismounted. He scanned Fuentes narrowly, while giving him affable welcome. Plainly he recognised him as an old patron, yet plainly the recognition was imperfect.

"Eh, my good Bartolomé, and so you still cling above the river? I hope custom clings here too?"

"But--but can it be the Señor Don----"

"Eugenio, my friend. The spectacles puzzle you: they belong to my brother, Don Andrea, and I may tell you that after a day's wear I find them trying to the eyes. But, you understand, there are reasons ... and so you will suppose me to be Don Andrea, while bringing a cup of wine, and another for my servant, to Don Eugenio's favourite seat, which was at the end of the garden beyond the mulberry-tree, if you remember."

"Assuredly this poor house is your Lordship's, and all that belongs to it. The wine shall be fetched with speed. But as for the table at the end of the garden, I regret to tell your Lordship that it is occupied for a while. If for this evening, I might recommend the parlour----" The innkeeper made his excuse with a certain quick trepidation which Fuentes did not fail to note.

"What is this? Your garden full? It appears then, my good Bartolomé, that your custom has not suffered in these bad times."

"On the contrary, Señor, it has fallen off woefully! My garden has been deserted for months, and is empty now, save for two gentlemen, who, as luck will have it, have chosen to seat themselves in your Lordship's favourite corner. Ah, yes, the old times were the best! and I was a fool to grumble, as I sometimes did, when my patrons ran me off my legs."

"But steady, Bartolomé: not so fast! Surely there used to be three tables beyond the mulberry-tree, or my memory is sadly at fault."

"Three tables? Yes, it is true there are three tables. Nevertheless----"

"I cannot see," pursued Fuentes with a musing air--"no, for the life of me I cannot see how two gentlemen should require three tables to drink their wine at."

"Nor I, Señor. It must, as you say, be a caprice: nevertheless they charged me that on all accounts they were to have that part of the garden to themselves."

"A very churlish caprice, then! They are Frenchmen, doubtless?"

"No, indeed, your Lordship: but two lads of good birth, gentlemen of Spain, the one a bachelor, the other a student of the University."

"All the more, then, they deserve a lesson. Bartolomé, you will tell your tapster to bring my wine to the vacant table beyond the mulberry-tree."

"But, Señor----" As Fuentes moved off, the innkeeper put forth a hand to entreat if not to restrain him.

"Eh?" Fuentes halted as if amazed at his impudence. "Ah, to be sure, I am Don Andrea: but do not forget, my friend, that Don Eugenio used to be quick-tempered, and that in members of one family these little likenesses crop up in the most unexpected fashion." He strode away down the shadowy garden-path over which in the tree-tops a last beam or two of sunset lingered: and I, having hitched up our beasts, followed him, carrying the saddle-bags and his guitar-case.

Three tables, as he had premised, stood in the patch of garden beyond the mulberry-tree, hedged in closely on three sides, giving a view in front upon the towers and fortifications across the river; a nook secluded as a stage-box facing a scene that might have been built and lit up for our delectation. The tables, with benches alongside, stood moderately close together--two by the river-wall, the third in the rear, where the hedge formed an angle: and the two gentlemen so jealous of their privacy were seated at the nearer of the two tables overlooking the river, and on the same bench--though at the extreme ends of it and something more than a yard apart.

They stared up angrily at our intrusion, and for the moment the elder of the pair seemed about to demand our business. But Fuentes walked calmly by, took his seat at the next table, pulled out his bundle of manuscript, adjusted his spectacles, and began to read. Having deposited my baggage, I took up a respectful position behind him, ignoring--somewhat ostentatiously perhaps--the strangers' presence, yet not without observing them from the corner of my eye.

They were young: the elder, maybe, three-and-twenty, short, thick-set, with features just now darkened by his ill-humour, but probably sullen enough at the best of times: the younger, tall and nervous and extraordinarily fair for a Spaniard, with a weak, restless mouth and restless, passionate eyes. Indeed, either this restlessness was a disease with him or he was suffering just now from an uncontrollable agitation. Eyes, mouth, feet, fingers--the whole man seemed to be twitching. I set down his age at eighteen. On the table stood a large flask of wine, from which he helped himself fiercely, and beside the flask lay a long bundle wrapped in a cloak.

This young man, having drained his glass at a gulp, let out an oath and sprang up suddenly with a glare upon Fuentes, who had stretched out his legs and was already absorbed in his reading.

"Señor Stranger," he began impetuously, "we would have you to know, if the innkeeper has not already told you----"

"Gently!" interposed his comrade. "You are going the wrong way to work. My friend, Sir"--he addressed Fuentes, who looked up with a mild surprise--"my friend, Sir, was about to suggest that the light is poor for reading."

"Oh," answered Fuentes, smiling easily, "for a minute or two--until they bring my wine. Moreover, I wear excellent glasses."

"But the place is not too well chosen."

Fuentes appeared to digest this for a moment, then turned around upon me with a puzzled air.

"My good Pedro, you have not misled me, I hope? I am short-sighted, gentlemen; and if we have strayed into a private garden I offer you my profoundest apologies." He gathered his manuscript into a roll and stood up.

"To be plain with you, Sir," said the dark man sullenly, "this is not precisely a private garden, and yet we desire privacy."

"Oho?" After a glance around, Fuentes fixed his eyes on the bundle lying on the table. "And at the point of the sword--eh?"

The two young men started and at once began to eye each other suspiciously.

"No, no," Fuentes assured them, smiling; "this is no trap, believe me, but a chance encounter; and I am no _alguacil_ in disguise, but a poor scholar returning to Salamanca for his doctorate. Nor do I seek to know the cause of your quarrel. But here comes the wine!" He waited until the tapster had set flask and glasses on the table and withdrawn. "In the interval before your friends arrive you will not grudge me, Sirs, the draining of a glass to remembrance in a garden where I too have loved my friends, and quarrelled with them, in days gone by--days older now than I care to reckon." He raised the wine and held it up for a moment against the sunset. "Youth--youth!" he sighed.

"You are welcome, Sir," said the younger man a trifle more graciously; "but we expect no seconds, and, believe me, we shall presently be pressed for time."

Fuentes raised his eyebrows. "You surprise and shock me, Sirs. In the days to which I drank just now it was not customary for gentlemen of the University of Salamanca to fight without witnesses. We left that to porters and grooms."

"And pray," sneered the darker young man, "may we know the name of him who from the height of his years and experience presumes to intrude this lecture on us?"

"You may address me, if you will, as Don Andrea Galazza de Villacastin, a licentiate of your University----"

To my astonishment the younger man stopped him with a short offensive laugh. "You may spare us the rest, Sir. Don Andrea Galazza is known to us and to all honest patriots by repute: we can supply the rest of his titles for ourselves, beginning with _renegado_----"

"Hist!" interposed his comrade, at the same time catching up the swords from the table. "Don't be a fool, Sebastian--speak lower, for God's sake!--the very soldiers at the bridge will hear you!"

"Ay, Sir," chimed in Fuentes gravely; "listen to your friend's advice, and do not increase the peril of your remarks by the foolishness of shouting them."

But the youngster, flushed with wine and overstrung, had lost for the moment all self-control. "I accept that risk," cried he, "for the pleasure of telling Don Andrea Galazza what kind of man he passes for among honourable folk. He, the brother of Don Eugenio--of our hero, the noble Fuentes! He, that signed his peace while that noble heart preferred to break!" He spat in furious contempt.

Fuentes turned to me quietly. "Behold one of the enthusiasts we came to seek," he murmured; "and one who will not fear risks. But these testimonials are embarrassing, and this fame of mine swells to a nuisance." He faced his accuser. "Nevertheless," answered he aloud, "you make a noise that must disconcert your friend, who is in two minds about assassinating me. Why spoil his game by arousing the neighbourhood?"

"Señor Don Andrea, you know too much--thanks to my friend here," said the dark man slowly.

"But we are not assassins," put in the youngster. "Renegade though you be, Don Andrea, I give you your chance." He snatched the foil from his senior's hand and presented it solemnly, hilt foremost, to Fuentes.

"Youth--youth!" murmured Fuentes with an appreciative laugh, as he tucked the foil under his arm, took off his spectacles and rubbed them, laughing again. He readjusted them carefully and, saluting, fell on guard. "I am at your service, Sir."

The youth stepped forward hotly, touched blades, and almost immediately lunged. An instant later his sword, as though it had been a bird released from his hand, flew over his shoulder into the twilight behind.

"That was ill-luck for you, Señor," said Fuentes lowering his point. "But who can be sure of himself in this confounded twilight?" He swung half-about towards the river-wall, with a glance across at the city, where already a few lights began to twinkle in the dusk. And, so turning, he seemed on a sudden to catch his breath.