“The latter has yet to come, Senor Capitano,” the Doctor interposed.

And I:  “My cousin, your distaste for disguise will yet be the death of you.  But tell me, 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, I will prepare the way for you,” said I:  “and by and by you will be astonished to find how easy it comes.”  I turned to the Doctor Gonsalvez.  “You must know, then, my father, that the Captain and I, though we follow the same business and with degrees of success we are too amiable to dispute about, yet employ very different methods.  He, for instance, scorns disguises, while I pride myself upon mine.  And, by the way, as a Professor of Moral Philosophy, you are doubtless used to deciding questions of casuistry?”