of heavy wheels and the crack of a great whip as a cart laden
with hay and drawn by six mules approached him from the direction of
Toledo.

The driver of the team was an old soldier, as indeed were most of the
Castilians at this time, and knew how to handle wounded men.  With great
care and a multitude of oaths he lifted Conyngham on to his cart and
proceeded with him to Madrid.




CHAPTER XIII
A WISE IGNORAMUS


    ‘God help me!  I know nothing—can but pray.’

IT was Father Concha’s custom to attend, at his church between the hours
of nine and ten in the morning, to such wants spiritual or temporal as
individual members of his flock chose to bring to him.

Thus it usually happened that the faithful found the oldhe knew too much about it to give an opinion.
And he took his leave.

‘That is the sort of woman to break one’s heart in the witness box,’ he
said as he passed out into the deserted street, and Señora Barenna, in
the great room with the armour, reflected complacently that the English
lord had been visibly impressed.

General Vincente and Estella arrived at the hotel in the evening, but did
not of course appear in the public rooms.  The dusty old travelling
carriage was placed in a quiet corner of the courtyard of the hotel, and
the General appeared on this, as on all occasions, to court retirement
and oblivion.  Unlike many of his brothers-in-arms, he had no desire to
catch the public eye.

‘There is doubtless something astir,’ said the waiter, who, in the
intervals of