"To whom?" asked Tom curtly, while the men about strained their ears to hear what was passing. "To my employer, _señor_." "And he is----?" "One whom I never met before. He lodges in a house in Oporto, and there I met him. His name I never heard. He is young and thin and dark. That is all I can tell you." Tom stood thinking for a while, and then walked to a distance with Jack Barwood. "Well?" he asked. "What would you do?" "Send along to Oporto," declared his adjutant. "Get hold of this employer." "And what about these papers?" asked Tom. "I'd dispatch them to headquarters." "Quite so; and then?" "Then?" asked Jack, a little troubled. "Then I'd set the watch again and see if I could catch others." "Good!" agreed Tom. "We'll do all that. Alfonso shall take a party to Oporto, carrying this fellow with him, with orders to scare him if he shows signs of lying. You shall send the papers to Wellington, with an explanation I shall write, and then I----" "Yes?" gasped Jack, conscious that his friend had all the while been leading up to the declaration of some plan. "I shall borrow this fellow's clothing. I'll write up a yarn which will do just as well as his papers, and then I'll seek out the owner of the cabaret in the street of St. Angelo, the man known as Francisco, and there discover all that there is to be learned with regard to Ciudad Rodrigo." It was a daring scheme to attempt; but then Tom had his orders. The following morning, in fact, found him stripped of his handsome staff uniform, and dressed in the clothes of their captive. He bade adieu to his comrades, went off down the height, and some two hours later was seen accosting the outposts placed by the French about the fortress. Jack and his friends, watching from above, saw their friend and leader disappear within a wide gateway. Thereafter, though they strained their eyes, there was not so much as a sign of him. He was gone altogether, swallowed by the massive defences of Ciudad Rodrigo, cut off from his friends, and surrounded by enemies who, if they discovered his disguise, would treat him as a spy and promptly shoot him. CHAPTER XIII Ciudad Rodrigo "Halt! Stand fast and give the countersign!" A huge French grenadier barred the road where it passed in beneath the frowning doorway of the fortress of Ciudad Rodrigo, and with his long bayonet dropped to the level of the chest of the intruder called upon him brusquely and in no uncertain tones to halt. "The countersign," he demanded once more, peremptorily, the point of his weapon actually entangled in the stranger's clothing, while the look on the soldier's face seemed to say that he would willingly make a little error and transfix him. As for the latter, he was a well-grown, active, young fellow, with tousled hair dangling over his eyes, a general appearance of untidiness, and a something about him which denoted neither the genuine Spaniard nor the genuine Portuguese.