ng, with the help of a little
walnut juice, I had given myself a fine Portuguese complexion with
other small touches sufficient to deceive a cleverer man. But by
ill-luck (or to give it a true name, by careless folly) I had knotted
under my collar that morning a yellow-patterned handkerchief which I
had worn every day at the Posada del Rio, and as his eyes travelled
from this to my face I saw that the man recognised me.

There was no time for hesitating. If I kept silence, no doubt he would
do the same; but if I let him go, it would be to make straight for
headquarters with his tale. I scraped away for a second or two in dead
silence, and then holding my razor point I said, sharp and low, "I am
going to kill you."

He turned white as a sheet, opened his mouth, and I could feel him
gathering his muscles together to heave himself out of the chair; no
easy matter. I laid the flat of the razor against his flesh, and he
sank back helpless. My hand was over his mouth. "Yes, I shall have
plenty of time before they find you." A sound in his throat was the
only answer, something between a grunt and a sob. "To be sure" I went
on, "I bear you no grudge. But there is no other way, unless--"

"No, no," he gasped. "I promise. The grave shall not be more secret."

"Ah," said I, "but how am I to believe that?"

"Parole d'honneur."

"I must have even a little more than that." I made him swear by the
faith of a soldier and half-a-dozen other oaths which occurred to me
as likely to bind him if, lacking honour and religion, he might still
have room in his lean body for a little superstition. He took every
oath eagerly, and with a pensive frown I resumed my shaving. At the
first scrape he winced and tried to push me back.

"Indeed no," said I; "business is business," and I finished the job
methodically, relentlessly. It still consoles me to think upon what he
must have suffered.

When at length I let him up he forced an uneasy laugh. "Well, comrade,
you had the better of me I must say. Eh! but you're a clever one--and
at Huerta, eh?" He held out his hand. "No rancour though--a fair trick
of war, and I am not the man to bear a grudge for it. After all war's
war, as they say. Some use one weapon, some another. You know," he
went on confidentially, "it isn't as if you had learnt anything out
of me. In that case--well, of course, it would have made all the
difference."

I fell to stropping my razor. "Since I have your oath--" I began