, what were you doing in this neighbourhood?"

"Why, watching Marmont, to be sure, as my orders were."

"Your orders? You don't mean to tell me that Lord Wellington knows of
your return!"

"I reported myself to him on the nineteenth of last month in the camp on
San Christoval: he gave me my directions that same evening."

"But, Heavens!" I cried, "it is barely a week ago that I returned from
the north and had an hour's interview with him; and he never mentioned
your name, though aware (as he must be) that no news in the world could
give me more joy."

"Is that so, cousin?" He gazed at me earnestly and wistfully, as I
thought.

"You know it is so," I answered, turning my face away that he might not
see my emotion.

"As for Lord Wellington's silence," Captain Alan went on, after musing a
while, "he has a great capacity for it, as you know; and perhaps he has
persuaded himself that we work better apart. Our later performances in
and around Sabugal might well excuse that belief."

"But now I suppose you have some message for him. Is it urgent?
Or will you satisfy me first how you came here--you, whom I left a
prisoner on the road to Bayonne and, as I desperately thought, to
execution?"

"There is no message, for I broke down before my work had well
recommenced; and Wellington knows of my illness and my whereabouts, so
there is no urgency."

He glanced at the Doctor and so did I. "The reverend father's behaviour
assuredly suggested urgency," I said.

"And was there none?" asked the old man quietly. "You sons of war chase
the oldest of human illusions: to you nothing is of moment but the
impact of brutal forces or the earthly cunning which arrays and moves
them. To me all this is less hateful than contemptible, in moment not
comparable with the joy of a single human soul. Believe me, my sons,
although the French have destroyed my peerless University--fortis
Salamantina, arx sapientia--I were less eager to hurry God's avenging
hand on them than to bring together two souls which in the pure joy of
meeting soar for a moment together, and, fraternising, forget this
world. Nay, deny it not: for I saw it, standing by. Least of all be
ashamed of it."

"I am not sure that I understand you, holy father," I answered.
"But you have done us a true service, and shall be rewarded by a
confession--from a stubborn heretic, too." I glanced at Captain Alan
mischievously.

My kinsman put up a hand in protest.

"Oh