“For a moment I thought the man daft.  What on earth (I asked myself) was this nonsense about Sabugal and a barber’s shop?  I had not been near Sabugal; as for the barber’s shop it sounded to me like a piece out of the childish rigmarole about cutting a cabbage leaf to make an apple pie.  Some fleeting suspicion I may have had that here was another affair in which you and I had again managed to get confused; but if so the suspicion occurred only to be dismissed.  A fortnight before you had left me on your way south to Badajoz, and you will own that to connect you with something which apparently had happened yesterday in a barber’s shop in Sabugal was to overstrain guessing.  Having nothing to say, I held my tongue; and General Ducrot put on a more magisterial air.  He resented this British phlegm in a prisoner with whom he had been graciously jocose and fell back on his national belief that we islanders, though occasionally funny, are so by force of eccentricity rather than by humour.

“‘I do not propose to deal with you myself,’ he announced.  ’At one time and another, sir, you have done our cause an infinity of mischief, and I prefer that the Duke of Ragusa should decide your fate.  I shall send you therefore to Sabugal to await his return.’

“This gave me my first intimation that Marmont was neither in Sabugal nor with his main army.  That same afternoon they marched me off to the town and set me under guard in a house next door to his headquarters.

“Marmont returned from Celorico (if my memory serves me) on the afternoon of the 17th.  I was taken before him at once.  He treated me with the greatest apparent kindness, hoped I had suffered no ill-usage, and wound up by inviting me to dinner.  A couple of hours later I was escorted to headquarters, where, on entering the room where he received his guests, I found him in conversation with a young staff officer who wore his arm in a sling.

“The marshal turned to me at once, and very gaily.  ‘I understand,’ said he with a smile, ’that I have no need to introduce you to Captain de Brissac.’

“I looked from him to the young officer in some bewilderment, and saw in a moment that Captain de Brissac was certainly not less bewildered than I.

“‘But Monsieur le Marechal—­but this is not the man!’

“‘Not the man?’

“’Most decidedly not.  The man of whom I spoke was dark and not above middle height.  He spoke Portuguese like a native, and belonged to a class altogether different.  It would be impossible for this gentleman to disguise himself so.’

“For a moment Marmont seemed no less puzzled than we.  Then he broke out laughing again.

“’Ah! of course; that will have been Captain McNeill’s servant—­the poor fellow who was killed,’ he added more gravely.  ’I am told, sir, that this servant shared and furthered most of your adventures?’

“‘He did indeed, M. le Marechal,’ said I; ’but excuse me if I am at a loss—­’