Pepito put his hand into his pocket and produced a second buckle, the exact fellow of the first. "Now I have two," he said. "So I see. One isn’t much use without the other. I suppose you will want them sewn on your shoes now. You found that too, eh?" "No, I cut it off. Señor thinks they are the buckles a poor Busno would wear?" "Well, no; they are a little unusual for a guerrillero, certainly. But he may have been a bandit first." "No, no. They were not his. Señor, listen as I tell. I find in the room one buckle; I think I know it. I put it in my pocket. I go out at once into the streets to look. What do I see? I see a man walk; one shoe has a buckle, the other shoe has not. I open my eyes wide; I say to myself: ’Ho! ho! That is what I thought!’ But I was not sure. I wait. A time comes. I see the one-buckle Señor go into the Café Arcos. I follow; big Jorge Arcos knows me now. I keep much in the dark; Señor One-buckle must not see me. But I see him; I see his foot; I am under the table. I put buckle one next to buckle two; they are brothers. I take my knife and cut off buckle two. It is Señor No-buckle now! Señor knows?" Jack had been impressed, not so much by the gipsy’s story as by the solemnity of his manner of telling it. "You have something more to tell me. What is it?" "Señor One-buckle, Señor No-buckle—who is it? One-buckle, I find it under the dead man in the tall house; two-buckle, I cut it from the shoe of—of the master of Señor One-eye." "Señor Priego?" "Sí, Señor!" *CHAPTER XXVI* *Wanted: Don Miguel Priego* Circumstantial Evidence—A Council of War—Miguel’s Despatch—A Statement of Facts—The Inevitable Inference—Shambles—In the Belfry—Without Guile—The People’s Curse Jack had had so many evidences of Pepito’s sagacity that he could not doubt the accuracy of the boy’s report. The shoe buckles almost certainly belonged to Don Miguel. From this one seed of fact sprang a whole sheaf of problems. Miguel had been in the room when the guerrillero was murdered; he may not have dealt the blow himself, but certainly he was there. Then why was he there? Had he learnt that the man was an afrancesado and gone personally to serve him as every good Spaniard would wish to serve a traitor? That was improbable, for the murder had been committed in secret, no report had been made of it, and Miguel was not the man to let slip the chance of adding to his popularity by ridding the city of a domestic foe. No, he had not gone to the house as an enemy; could he have gone to it as a friend? What bond of union could there be between Don Miguel Priego, in civil life a well-to-do merchant and now also major in Palafox’s hussars, and a poor obscure peasant who had no standing whatever as a citizen or a soldier?