My kinsman eyed him; and I could have laughed to watch it--that gaze betrayed a faint expiring hope that, after all, his diatribes against the Scarlet Woman had shaken the Doctor--upon whom (I need scarcely say) they had produced about as much effect as upon the rock of Rueda itself. And I think that, though regretfully, he must at length have realised this, for he sank back on the pillow again with a gentle weariness in every line of his Don Quixote face. "Ah, yes, from sunstroke! My cousin"--here he turned towards me--"this gentleman--or, as I must now learn to call him, this most reverend Doctor of Philosophy, Gil Gonsalvez de Covadonga--found me some days ago stretched unconscious beside the highroad to Tordesillas, and in two ways has saved my life: first, by conveying me to this hiding-place, for the whole _terrain_ was occupied by Marmont's troops, and I lay there in my scarlet tunic, a windfall for the first French patrol that might pass; and, secondly, by nursing me through delirium back to health of mind and strength of body." "The latter has yet to come, Senor Capitano," the Doctor interposed. And I: "My cousin, your distaste for disguise will yet be the death of you. But tell me, what were you doing in this neighbourhood?" "Why, watching Marmont, to be sure, as my orders were." "Your orders? You don't mean to tell me that Lord Wellington knows of your return!" "I reported myself to him on the nineteenth of last month in the camp on San Christoval: he gave me my directions that same evening." "But, Heavens!" I cried, "it is barely a week ago that I returned from the north and had an hour's interview with him; and he never mentioned your name, though aware (as he must be) that no news in the world could give me more joy." "Is that so, cousin?" He gazed at me earnestly and wistfully, as I thought. "You know it is so," I answered, turning my face away that he might not see my emotion. "As for Lord Wellington's silence," Captain Alan went on, after musing a while, "he has a great capacity for it, as you know; and perhaps he has persuaded himself that we work better apart. Our later performances in and around Sabugal might well excuse that belief." "But now I suppose you have some message for him. Is it urgent? Or will you satisfy me first how you came here--you, whom I left a prisoner on the road to Bayonne and, as I desperately thought, to execution?" "There is no message, for I broke down before my work had well recommenced; and Wellington knows of my illness and my whereabouts, so there is no urgency." He glanced at the Doctor and so did I. "The reverend father's behaviour assuredly suggested urgency," I said.