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.

“That’s understood.  My word, though, it is hard to believe!”

“You had best believe it, anyway,” said I; and with a sort of shamefaced swagger he lurched out of the shop.

Well, I did not like it.  I walked to the door and watched him down the street.  Though it wanted an hour of sunset I determined to put up my shutters and take a stroll by the river.  I had done the most necessary part of my work in Sabugal; to-morrow I would make my way back to Bellomonte, but in case of hindrance it might be as well to know how the river bank was guarded.  At this point a really happy inspiration seized me.  There were many pools in the marsh land by the river—­pools left by the recent floods.  Possibly by hunting among these and stirring up the mud I might replenish my stock of leeches.  I had the vaguest notion how leeches were gathered, but the pursuit would at the worst give me an excuse for dawdling and spying out the land.

I closed the shop at once, hunted out a tin box, and with this and my bottle (to serve as evidence, if necessary, of my good faith) made my way down to the river side north of the town.  The bank here was well guarded by patrols, between whom a number of peaceful citizens sat a-fishing.  Seen thus in line and with their backs turned to me they bore a ludicrous resemblance to a row of spectators at a play; and gazing beyond them, though dazzled for a moment by the full level rays of the sun, I presently became aware of a spectacle worth looking at.