the
tracks, that you'd followed the Duke's car, for your tracks came sometimes
on his, almost obliterating his trail for a bit. I can tell you, sir, it
cheered me up to be coming on your tracks like that. Made me feel at home
in a strange country. The bike took me along pretty well, too; but do the
best I could, night came on without my overtaking you. For fear of losing
the tracks, I put up at a _posada_, got under way the minute there was a
streak of dawn, and found you here by inquiring."

"You're a regular Sherlock Holmes as well as a thorough brick, Ropes,"
said I. "Now, have something to eat; get the motor bicycle back to San
Sebastian by rail, and be ready for another start."

With this I was off, leaving him to Dick. I turned the collar of
Cristobal's big coat up to my eyes, pulled the cap down far enough almost
to meet it, and went out, praying to meet none of Cristobal's
fellow-officers.

The wild wind for which Burgos is famed wailed through the long, arcaded
streets with their tall yellow buildings, and tried to hurl me back from
the great honey-coloured gateway with its towers and pinnacles, where I
would have paused to pick out the statue of the Cid from other battered
statues in weather-beaten niches.

The few men who passed, wrapped in black _capas_ turned over with blue or
crimson, had the fine-cut, melancholy features of those who live in
northern cold, and their glances were as chill as the weather. But that
was better than if they had taken too much interest in a strange face in a
familiar uniform; and it would have needed more than a freezing stare to
blight the spring in my heart, for I was going to Monica.

I was ready to love Burgos for the sake of my childhood's hero, the brave
old Cid, with whom every stone seemed to be associated. This was the city
of the Cid as well as the country of the Cid; and if I had come into my
fatherland as a sightseer, and not as a lover, I should have gone on a
pilgrimage to his tomb at the convent of San Pedro de Cardena, only a few
kilometres out of Burgos--that City of Battles.

As it was, I should have to be content with reading about it in some book,
for Carmona would not desert his car to go; and where Carmona went, there
must I go also.

At least I had a cup of coffee at "The Cafe of the Cid" on my way to the
cathedral; and the first landmark I sought in that triumph of Gothic
grandeur was the coffer of the Cid. I might have hours to wait, I knew,
bef