Fuentes' gaiety returned as we found ourselves in the street. "We shall get on together like a pair of schoolboys," he assured me. "We understand each other, you and I. But oh, those islanders!" * * * * * We left Lisbon that same evening on muleback, taking the road for Abrantes. So universally were the French hated that the odds were we might have dispensed with precautions at this stage, and indeed for the greater part of the journey. The frontier once passed we should be travelling in our native country--Fuentes as a gypsy and I as an Asturian, moving from one harvest-job to another. We carried no compromising papers: and if the French wanted to arrest folks on mere suspicion they had the entire population to practise on. Nevertheless, having ridden north-east for some leagues beyond Abrantes--on the direct road leading past Ciudad Rodrigo to Salamanca--we halted at Amendoa, bartered one of our mules for a couple of skins of wine and ten days' provisions, and, having made our new toilet in a chestnut grove outside the town, headed back for the road leading east through Villa Velha into the Tagus valley. Beyond the frontier we were among Marmont's cantonments: but these lay scattered, and we avoided them easily. Keeping to the hill-tracks on the northern bank of the river, and giving a wide berth to the French posts in front of Alcantara, we struck away boldly for the north through the Sierras: reached the Alagon, and, following up its gorges, crossed the mountains in the rear of Bejar, where a French force guarded the military pass. So far we had travelled unmolested, if toilsomely; and a pleasanter comrade than Fuentes no man could ask for. His gaiety never failed him: yet it was ever gentle, and I suspected that it covered either a native melancholy or some settled sorrow--sorrow for his country, belike--but there were depths he never allowed me to sound. He did everything well, from singing a love-song to tickling a trout and cooking it for our supper: and it was after such a supper, as we lay and smoked on a heathery slope beyond Bejar, that he unfolded his further plans. "My friend", said he, "there were once two brothers, students of Salamanca, and not far removed in age. Of these the elder was given to love-making and playing on the guitar; while the other stuck to his books--which was all the more creditable because his eyes were weak. I hope you are enjoying this story?" "It begins to be interesting."