ary black coat, such as elderly Spaniards of the middle class
wear every day.

"You must not excite yourself," he said. "As for your coming here, I found
you lying in the road one dark night, with your head cut open, and out of
compassion I brought you into my house."

"If you are a doctor, and have no reason to hide your face from me, why do
you cover it up with a _capucha_?" I went on incredulously.

"It is the _capucha_ of the _cofradia_ to which I belong," explained the
man. "I wear it at certain hours because of a vow which will not expire
till Corpus Christi. If I were a wicked person, who wished you harm, why
need I trouble to hide my face so that you should not know it again? I
live alone in this house, and if I wished you evil, I need never let you
leave these rooms. But instead, I have taken care of you, and you have
repaid some experiments I have made, for now I think you are getting well.
You have only to be patient."

"Tell me how long since you played good Samaritan and picked me up by the
roadside," said I. "Then perhaps I shall try to be patient."

"How long?" he echoed. "I can't tell you that. To a philosopher like me
days and weeks are much the same."

"Philosophers have often been in the pay of dukes," I said.

"Those days have passed. I live my life without dukes."

"Without the Duke of Carmona?"

"The Duke of Carmona? That is a mere name to me. Why do you speak it?"

"I think you can guess."

"I fear that after all your brain is not clear. We must have a little more
of the good medicine."

Before I knew what he meant to do, he was out of the alcove, and out of
sight in the room beyond. Again I tried my strength, and would have
followed, but before I could do more than struggle up from the bed, the
door had been unlocked, and locked again.

"He must keep the key in his pocket," I thought.

I did not believe a word of the plausible explanations. The continued
mental effort I had been making had cleared, rather than tired my brain;
and I was out of that black sea of horror in which I had been drowning.

I had not been mad, and I could not have been in this house for many
weeks, since the man in the _capucha_ talked of Corpus Christi as still in
the future.

I remembered Colonel O'Donnel's telegram, and his mention of a man in
Granada whom Carmona valued above many doctors. It seemed not impossible
that this person and my "good friend" were one and the same; but if--weak
as I was now-