He took us into a small room and poured out some French cognac, which he gave to the men that had accompanied me. They drank, and threw themselves before the fire in the larger room. The repose of the building was intensified that night, and I even fancied that the footsteps on the corridor were lighter and softer. The old Spaniard’s habitual gravity was deeper; we might have been shut out from the world as well as the whistling storm, behind those ancient walls with their time-worn inheritor.
Before I could repeat my inquiry he retired. In a few minutes two smoking dishes of chupa with coffee were placed before us, and my men ate ravenously. I drank the coffee, but my excitement and weariness kept down the instincts of hunger.
I was sitting sadly by the fire when he reentered.
“You have eat?”
I said, “Yes,” to please him.
“Bueno, eat when you can,—food and appetite are not always.”
He said this with that Sancho-like simplicity with which most of his countrymen utter a proverb, as though it were an experience rather than a legend, and, taking the riata from the floor, held it almost tenderly before him.
“It was made by me, senor.”
“I kept it as a clue to him, Don Altascar,” I said. “If I could find him”—
“He is here.”