e I come into this fatigue job: for the man's no friend
of mine, and will not be looking it, I hope."

"Did I so?" Bill exclaimed, regarding himself suddenly from outside, as
it were, and not without admiration. "Did I promise that?
Well, then"--he fixed a sternly disapproving stare on the Frenchman--
"the Lord knows what possessed me; but to the bridgehead you go, if I
fight the whole of Clausel's division single-handed. Take his feet,
Mike; I'm a man of my word. Hep!--ready is it? For'ard!"

For a minute or so, as they staggered down the road, I stared after
them; and then upon an impulse mounted the track by which they had
descended.

It was easy enough, or they had never come down alive; but the sun's
rays smote hotly off the face of the rock, and at one point I narrowly
missed being brained by a stone dislodged by some drunkard above me.
Already, however, the stream of tipplers had begun to set back towards
the camp, and my main difficulty was to steer against it, avoiding
disputes as to the rule of the road. I had no intention of climbing to
the castle: my whim was--and herein again I set my training a test--to
walk straight to the particular opening from which, across the
Zapardiel, I had seen my comedians emerge.

I found it, not without difficulty--a broad archway of rock, so low that
a man of ordinary stature must stoop to pass beneath it; with, for
threshold, a sill of dry fine earth which sloped up to a ridge
immediately beneath the archway, and on the inner side dipped down into
darkness so abruptly that as I mounted on the outer side I found myself
staring, at a distance of two yards or less, into the face of an old man
seated within the cave, out of which his head and shoulders arose into
view as if by magic.

"Ah!" said he calmly. "Good evening, senor. You will find good
entertainment within." He pointed past him into absolute night, or so
it seemed to my dazzled eyes.

He spoke in Spanish, which is my native tongue--although not my
ancestral one. And as I crouched to pass the archway I found time to
speculate on his business in this cavern. For clearly he had not come
hither to drink, and as clearly he had nothing to do with either army.
At first glance I took him for a priest; but his bands, if he wore them,
were hidden beneath a dark poncho fitting tightly about his throat, and
his bald head baffled any search for a tonsure. Although a small book
lay open on his lap, I had interrupte