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“There is no risk,” answered the reverend father, at once leading the way: “none, that is to say, with me to guide you.”

“There is risk, then, in some degree?”

“We skirt a labyrinth,” he answered quietly. “You will have observed, of course, that no one has passed us or disturbed our talk. To be sure, the archway under which you found me is one of the ‘false entrances,’ as they are called, of Rueda cellars. There are a dozen between this and the summit, and perhaps half a dozen below, which give easy access to the wine-vaults, and in any of which a crowd of goers and comers would have incommoded us. For the soldiers would seem–and very wisely, I must allow–to follow a chart and confine themselves to the easier outskirts of these caves. Wisely, because the few cellars they visit contain Val de Penas enough to keep two armies drunk until either Wellington enters Madrid or Marmont recaptures Salamanca. But they are not adventurous: and the few who dare, though no doubt they penetrate to better wine, are not in the end to be envied. . . . Now this passage of ours is popularly, but quite erroneously, supposed to lead nowhere, and is therefore by consent avoided.”

“Excuse me,” said I, “but it was precisely by this exit that I saw emerge three men as honestly drunk as any three I have met in my life.”

For the moment he seemed to pay no heed, but stooped and held the candle low before his feet.

“The path, you perceive, here shelves downwards. By following it we should find ourselves, after ten minutes or so, at the end of a cul de sac. But see this narrow ledge to the right–pay particular heed to your footsteps here, I pray you: it curves to the right, broadening ever so little before it disappears around the corner: yet here lies the true path, and you shall presently own it an excellent one.” He sprang forward like a goat, and turning, again held the candle low that I might plant my feet wisely. Sure enough, just around the corner the ledge widened at once, and we passed into a new gallery.

“Ah, you were talking of those three drunkards? Well, they must have emerged by following this very path.”

“Impossible.”

“Excuse me, but for a scout whose fame is acknowledged, you seem fond of a word which Bonaparte (we are told) has banished from the dictionaries. Ask yourself, now. They were assuredly drunk, and your own eyes have assured you there is no wine between us and daylight. My son, I have inhabited Rueda long enough to acquire a faith in miracles, even had I brought none with me. Along this ledge our three drunkards strolled like children out of the very womb of earth. They will never know what they escaped: should the knowledge ever come to them it ought to turn their hair grey then and there.”

“Children and drunkards,” said I. “You know the byword?”

“And might believe it–but for much evidence on the other side.”

But I was following another thought, and for the moment did not hear him closely. “I suppose, then, the owners guard the main entrances, but leave such as this, for instance, to be defended by their own difficulty?”

“Why should any be guarded?” he asked, pausing to untie a second candle from the bunch he had suspended from his belt.

“Eh? Surely to leave all this wine exposed in a world of thieves–“

The reverend father smiled as he lit the new candle from the stump of his old one. “No doubt the wine-growers did not contemplate a visit from two armies, and such very thirsty ones. The peasants hereabouts are abstemious, and the few thieves count for no more than flies. For the rest–“