turn to come back--that's your time." I took José by the arm. "We may as well be there to see. How were you planning to cross?" "Oh," said he, "a marketer--with a raw-boned Galician horse and two panniers of eggs--for Arapiles--" "That will do; but you must enter the village at the farther end and come down the road to the ford. Get your horse"--we crept back to the granary together--"but wait a moment, and I will show you the way round." When I rejoined him at the back of the granary he had his horse ready, and we started to work around the village. But I had miscalculated the time. The sky was growing lighter, and scarcely were we in the lane behind the courtyard before the bugles began to sound. "Well," said I, "that may save us some trouble after all." Across the lane was an archway leading into a wheelwright's yard. It had a tall door of solid oak studded with iron nails; but this was unlocked and unbolted, and I knew the yard to be vacant, for the French farriers had requisitioned all the wheelwright's tools three days before, and the honest man had taken to his bed and proposed to stay there pending compensation. To this archway we hastily crossed, and had barely time to close the door behind us before the soldiers, whose billets lay farther up the lane, came running by in twos and threes for the alarm-post, the later ones buckling their accoutrements as they ran halting now and then, and muttering as they fumbled with a strap or a button. José at my instruction had loosened his horse's off hind shoe just sufficiently to allow it to clap; and as soon as he was ready I opened the door boldly, and we stepped out into the lane among the soldiers, cursing the dog's son of a smith who would not arise from his lazy bed to attend to two poor marketers pressed for time. Now it had been dim within the archway, but out in the lane there was plenty of light, and it did me good to see José start when his eyes fell on me. For a couple of seconds I am sure he believed himself betrayed: and yet, as I explained to him afterwards, it was perhaps the simplest of all my disguises and--barring the wig--depended more upon speech and gait than upon any alteration of the face. (For a particular account of it I must refer the reader back to my adventure in Villafranca. On this occasion, having proved it once, I felt more confident; and since it deceived José, I felt I could challenge scrutiny as an aged peasant travelling with his son to market.)