"D'ye know who's in there?" he asked, jerking his thumb back towards Ciudad Rodrigo.
"No, sir," I answered, scarcely grasping the question, but quaking as this man always made me quake.
"Thought you mightn't. Well then, our friend is in there."
"Our friend?" I echoed. "Who?"
"Whitmore." His grin became ferocious now. "We have him, now—have him sure enough, this time—eh?"
But how on earth could Mr. Whitmore have come in Ciudad Rodrigo? Leicester read the question in my eyes, and answered it, pushing his face close to mine in the fog.
"He's a deserter. If the river don't come down in flood, we'll have him sure enough. And it won't, you mark my words! Two or three days of flood would let up Marmont upon us and spoil everything. But this weather's going to hold, and—it's a bad death for deserters," he wound up, with a snarling laugh.
"Mr. Whitmore a deserter? But how?"
"Ah, you've come to the right man to ask. I bear you no grudge, boy; and as for Plinlimmon—how's he doing, by the way?"
"I've scarcely seen him since I joined. He passed you just now, didn't he?"