The speaker was an old, greyhaired man, with wrinkled features, and a stoop in his shoulders; and, notwithstanding a cunning twinkle in his eye, there was no mistaking him for any thing else than he asserted himself to be.
The officer turned away from him, glanced at the rest of the party, and seemed about to let them pass, when his eye fell upon the sturdy, crop-headed peasant already referred to. He immediately approached him.
"Where do you come from?" said he, eyeing him with a look of suspicion.
The sole reply was a stare of stupid surprise. The officer repeated the question.
"From Berriozar," answered the man, naming a village at a greater distance from Pampeluna than the one to which old Samaniego claimed to belong. And then, as if he supposed the officer inclined to become a customer, he reached over to his pannier and took out a basket of figs.
"Fine figs, your worship," said he, mixing execrably bad Spanish with Basque words. "Muy barato. You shall have them very cheap."
When the man mentioned his place of abode, two or three of the women exchanged a quick glance of surprise; but this escaped the notice of the officer, who now looked hard in the peasant's face, which preserved its former expression of immovable and sleepy stupidity.
"Dismount," said the ensign.
The man pointed to his bandaged ankle; but on a repetition of the order he obeyed, with a grimace of pain, and then stood on one leg, supporting himself against the mule.
"I shall detain this fellow," said the officer, after a moment's pause. "Take him into the guard-room."