"That will not be easy," said she, with a pucker of her pretty forehead. "They are scared and afraid for their heads: nevertheless, Don Eugenio might bring back their confidence, if only we can bring him face to face with them." She seated herself on the bed's edge and mused awhile with her hands in her lap. "You know where to find them?" asked Fuentes, addressing the company in general. "Oh, yes, Señor--assuredly we know where to find them!" answered one or two. "Then the whole thing is very simple. You must let me join your choir, gentlemen." "Yes, yes, _that_ is simple enough," put in Luisa impatiently: "the more so, as our chorus is popular not only in the taverns, but at the French officers' messes. But these spies of ours are slow and dull to a degree: I think sometimes it takes a quite special clumsiness to be a clerk of the arsenal or to swindle the country in the military stores. We can get you into communication with them, Don Eugenio: but how are they to pass their information to _you_? They are born bunglers, and the French begin to use their eyes." She pursed her lips for a moment. "Is your friend new to this work?" she asked, suddenly turning toward me a gaze of frank inspection. Fuentes smiled. "You would not say so, Señorita, were I free to tell you his name." "As for that," said I, "where Señor Don Eugenio entrusts his secret I may not hesitate to entrust mine. My name is Manuel MacNeill, Señorita, and I kiss your hands and am at your service." Luisa rose and dropped me a very stately curtsey. "Happy were I, Don Manuel MacNeill, to welcome you, even if you did not solve our difficulty. You are clever at disguises, I have been told. Well, I have a disguise for you--though not, to be sure, a pleasant one." "I take the downs with the ups," said I. "Well, then, Don Diego here is an artist. He can paint you a bunch of grapes so that the birds come to peck at it: moreover, he has studied at the hospital. We must find you a suit of rags, Sir, and Don Diego shall paint you as full of sores as Lazarus." "And after that?" "After that you will go to the porch of the New Cathedral, to the shady side of it--look you how I study your comfort--facing on the Square of the Old College: and there you shall collect the alms of the charitable. Many things, I am told, find their way into a beggar's hat." "Señorita," said Fuentes gravely, with a glance up at the lamp, "it was a good star that led us here to-night." "The star, as you call it, has not failed in all these years," she answered, with a look of timid appeal which hardened to one of defiance. "Nay," answered he coldly and lightly, "I never doubted it would--while there was oil to feed it."