Conyngham gave a sharp cry of pain and threw back his head. Larralde had stabbed him in the back. The Englishman swayed in the saddle as if trying to balance himself, his legs bent back from the knee in the sharpness of a biting pain. The heavy stirrups swung free. Then, slowly, Conyngham toppled forward and rolled out of the saddle, falling to the road with a thud. Larralde watched him with a white face and staring eyes. Then he looked quickly round over the darkening landscape. There was no one in sight. This was one of the waste places of the world. Larralde seemed to remember the Eye that seeth even there, and crossed himself as he slipped from the saddle to the ground. He was shaking all over. His face was ashen, for it is a terrible thing to kill a man and be left alone with him. Conyngham’s eyes were closed. There was blood on his lips. With hands that shook like leaves Esteban Larralde searched the Englishman, found nothing, and cursed his ill fortune. Then he stood upright, and in the dim light his face shone as if he had dipped it in water. He crept into the saddle and rode on towards Madrid. It was quite dark when Conyngham recovered consciousness. In turning him over to search his pockets Larralde had perhaps, unwittingly, saved his life by placing him in a position that checked the internal hæmorrhage. What served to bring back the Englishman’s wandering senses was the rumbling of heavy wheels and the crack of a great whip as a cart laden with hay and drawn by six mules approached him from the direction of Toledo. The driver of the team was an old soldier, as indeed were most of the Castilians at this time, and knew how to handle wounded men. With great care and a multitude of oaths he lifted Conyngham on to his cart and proceeded with him to Madrid. CHAPTER XIII A WISE IGNORAMUS ‘God help me! I know nothing—can but pray.’ IT was Father Concha’s custom to attend, at his church between the hours of nine and ten in the morning, to such wants spiritual or temporal as individual members of his flock chose to bring to him. Thus it usually happened that the faithful found the old priest at nine o’clock sunning himself at the front door of the sacred edifice, smoking a reflective cigarette and exchanging the time of day with passers-by or such as had leisure to pause a moment. ‘Whether it is body or soul that is in trouble—come to me,’ he would say. ‘For the body I can do a little—a very little. I have twenty pounds a year, and it is not always paid to me, but I sometimes have a trifle for charity. For the soul I can do a little more.’ After a storm of wind and rain, such as come in the winter-time, it was no uncommon sight to see the priest sweeping the leaves and dust from the church steps and using the strongest language at the bootmaker over the way whose business this was supposed to be.