Title: The King's Own Borderers, Volume III (of 3): A Military Romance
Author: Grant, James
Language: English
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VOLUME III (OF 3) ***



  THE KING'S OWN BORDERERS.

  A Military Romance.


  BY

  JAMES GRANT,


  AUTHOR OF
  "SECOND TO NONE," "THE ROMANCE OF WAR," "THE YELLOW FRIGATE,"
  ETC. ETC.



  "Memories fast are thronging o'er me,
    Of the grand old fields of Spain;
  How he faced the charge of Junot,
    And the fight where Moore was slain.
  Oh the years of weary waiting
    For the glorious chance he sought,
  For the slowly ripened harvest
    That life's latest autumn brought."



  IN THREE VOLUMES.

  VOL. III.



  LONDON:
  GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SONS,
  BROADWAY, LUDGATE HILL.

  1865.



  LONDON:
  SAVILL AND EDWARDS, PRINTERS, CHANDOS STREET,
  COVENT-GARDEN.



  CONTENTS
  OF
  THE THIRD VOLUME.


  CHAP.

  I. PLAYING WITH FIRE
  II. THE POISONED WINE
  III. PADRE FLOREZ
  IV. THE ARMY MARCHES
  V. HALT AT AZUMAR
  VI. THE ADVANCE INTO SPAIN
  VII. RETROGRESSION
  VIII. A MESSAGE FROM THE ENEMY
  IX. THE PRISONER
  X. THE COURT-MARTIAL
  XI. LOVE ME
  XII. THE OLD BRIGADIER
  XIII. THE RETREAT
  XIV. FRESH DISASTERS
  XV. A SMILE OF FORTUNE
  XVI. PIQUE
  XVII. THE COMBAT OF LUGO
  XVIII. A WARNING
  XIX. THE BATTLE OF CORUNNA
  XX. THE BURIAL
  XXI. TOO LATE
  XXII. MADAME DE RIBEAUPIERRE
  XXIII. THE "BIEN AIMÉ"
  XXIV. MINDEN LODGE
  XXV. THE REVELATIONS OF A NIGHT



THE KING'S OWN BORDERERS.



CHAPTER I.

PLAYING WITH FIRE.

  "Fraught with this fine intention, and well fenced
    In mail of proof--her purity of soul,
  She, for the future of her strength convinced,
    And that her honour was a rock or mole,
  Exceeding sagely from that hour dispensed
    With any kind of troublesome control;
  But whether Julia to the task was equal,
  Is that which must be gathered in the sequel."
                                                BYRON.


For two other entire days the rain continued to pour as it only pours
in the Peninsula during the wet season, and our travellers were
compelled to keep close within the doors of the Villa de Maciera.
Could Quentin have lifted the veil that hides the future, and
foreseen the turmoil and danger in which this unexpected delay would
eventually involve him, he would certainly have made some vigorous
efforts to procure horses or mules at Salorino, to push on for
Portalegre, in spite of wind or rain; but what, then, was he to do
with Donna Isidora?  In such a November deluge she could neither
travel on horse or foot, and "leathern conveyances" were not to be
had in Spanish Estremadura in those days, nor in the present either,
probably.  To leave her alone in that deserted house was not to be
thought of.

So Quentin stayed.

Time did not pass slowly, however.  They did not read, you may be
assured, though books were plentifully strewed about, as the French
had been lighting their pipes with them; but Isidora took to teaching
Quentin the language of the fan, as spoken or used at the bull-fight,
the theatre, on the prado, or elsewhere, and with such a pair of eyes
beaming on him, over, under, or through the sticks of the aforesaid
fan, he proved an apt scholar.  Who would have been otherwise?

He taught her his name, at which she laughed very much, and thought
it an odd one.

Ere the noon of the second day, they had made great progress in their
friendship, and, circumstanced as they were, could they have failed
to do so?  Isolated and without resource, save in each other's
dangerous society, they could scarcely be ever separate in that huge
deserted house, in which they were besieged by the weather.

That the impulsive Spanish girl had conceived a strong affection for
Quentin was evident from her occasional silence, her palpitation, her
changing look, and the half-suppressed fire of her dark eyes, when he
approached or spoke to her; then it would seem, that as he grew
bewildered and timid, she became bold and unconstrained.

It would be difficult to trace the workings and describe the
struggles of Donna Isidora's heart in the growing passion she felt
for Quentin--the mere result of accidents which she could not
control, and a propinquity which she could not avoid; or how rapidly
the brief self-delusion of sisterhood and platonic affection melted
away before the warm and impulsive nature of her character; how
reason weakened as passion grew strong, and how she resolved to bend
him to her will, for in mind and race, rather more than years, she
was much his senior.

She knew that Spain was almost lawless now; that ties were broken,
the bonds of society loosed, and that civil order, such as it was,
had disappeared amid the anarchy consequent to the French invasion:
hence a hundred wild schemes coursed through her busy brain.  She
even hoped to lure him into the guerilla ranks, or to fly with her to
some remote part of the provinces, where they could never more be
traced; to the mountains of Estrella, the Sierra de Oca, or the dark
and wooded ranges of the Sierra Morena, where, forgotten alike by
friend and foe, they could live on unknown.  Such were her vague
ideas for the future.  For the present, it sufficed her that she
loved Quentin, and that he must be taught to love her in return.

On the other hand, it is difficult to define exactly the feeling
which Quentin entertained for his young Spanish friend.  Of her
wonderful beauty he was by no means insensible.  Was it platonic
regard that _he_ felt?  We should not think so at his years, and more
especially as we are disinclined to believe in such love at all.
Then what the deuce was it? the reader may ask.

Flirtation, perhaps--"playing with fire," certainly.

Young though he was, Quentin could not forget Flora Warrender, and
that sweet evening by the Kelpie's Pool, and the first thrill of
boyish love, with all the anxious moments, the feverish hopes that
stirred his heart--the tender memories of his grande passion, for
such it was; and thus something of chivalry in his breast made him
struggle against the present tempter and her piquante charms, for
Flora's gentle image always seemed to rise up between him and her;
and yet--and yet--there was something very bewildering in the hourly
companionship, the complete isolation and reliance of this lovely
young girl with whom he was now wandering in solitude--a
companionship known to themselves alone.  It was delightful but
perilous work, and Quentin could not analyse, even if he cared to do
so, the emotions she was exciting in his breast.

Where, when, and how was it all to end?  He feared that he felt too
little anxiety for reaching Portalegre and delivering the reply to
Sir John Hope's despatch; and yet, if the storm abated, why tarry?

Quentin was soon assured that Isidora loved him; and as he was not
without that most useful bump on his occiput denominated self-esteem,
he felt flattered accordingly; yet, withal, he struggled manfully
against the passion, with which this dangerous knowledge and
Isidora's attractions, were both calculated to inspire him.

He was anxious to appear to advantage in her eyes.  Why?  She was
nothing to him, yet, for some time, she had been the object of all
his solicitude.  In the course of conversation, she admitted that she
had many admirers, which, for a girl so attractive, was likely
enough.  But why permit the development of a passion in her that
could lead to nothing good?  Why respond to her growing tenderness?
Why--ay, there was the rub, the lure, and the peril.

His affections, such as a lad not yet twenty may possess, were
promised elsewhere.  Was Flora true, and remembering him still?  This
was rub number two.

Quentin Kennedy, I tremble for thee; and, if the truth must be told,
much more for the future peace and reputation of Donna Isidora de
Saldos, for neither a wholesome terror of Baltasar's wrath or the
Padre Trevino's knife may avail her much.

"What if she loves me--loves me as dear Flora did?" thought Quentin;
and when this pleasing but alarming idea occurred to him, he really
dreaded that her heart might be too far involved in those tender
passages, coquetries, and other little matters incident to their
hourly intercourse: white hands taken almost inadvertently or as a
matter of course; a soft cheek, at times so near his own; and
darkly-lashed eyes that looked softly into his, were rather alluring,
certainly.

In Spain, women do not shake hands with men; their dainty fingers
(dingy frequently) are kissed, or not touched at all; hence we may
suppose that Quentin and Isidora, when they began to sit hand-in-hand
looking out on the pouring rain as twilight deepened, had got a long
way on in lovemaking--in engineering parlance, that he had pushed the
trenches to the base of the glacis.

Some one remarks somewhere, that the fogs and sleet of England mar
many a ripening love; but that under the clear skies, in the balmy
air, in the long sultry days, the voluptuous evenings, and still more
in the gorgeous moonlights of Spain, the gentle passion is of more
rapid growth, and becomes more impulsive, heartfelt, and keen.

In the present instance, however, chance and a storm--such as that
which waylaid Dido and the Trojan hero--had been the inspirers of
Donna Isidora, who, sooth to say, found Quentin somewhat slow to
follow her example.

"Mi hermano--my brother--you will be and must be," she would whisper
at times, in a manner that, to say the least of it, was very
bewitching.

"I shall try, Donna Isidora."

"Try, say you?  Wherefore only _try_?" she asked, with her eyes full
of fire and inquiry.  "Is it a task so difficult to feel esteem or
love for me?  Go!  I shall hate you!"  Then she would thrust aside
his hand, and pouting, half turn away her flushing face, only that
the little hand might be taken again, an explanation made, and
reconciliation effected.

On the evening of the second day, after one of those little poutings,
and after Isidora, in anger, had been absent from him nearly two
hours, she rejoined Quentin in the boudoir, which was their usual
apartment, and where he welcomed her reappearance so warmly, that her
face was overspread by happy and beautiful smiles.

Poor Quentin, who was at that age when a young man is apt to slide
rather than fall into a regular love fit, was gradually being
ensnared.

"The companionship of these few days I shall remember for ever," said
he.  "You shall indeed be sorrowed for, hermana mia."

"Think only of the present, and not of parting," said she, letting
her cheek sink upon his shoulder, as they sat, hand in hand, in the
window of the little boudoir, the objects of which were half hidden
in the twilight.

Quentin felt his heart beat quickly, and his respiration become
thick, but he said with a tender smile--

"Isidora, I am almost afraid of you."

"Afraid--and of _me_?"

"Yes."

"But why, mi querido?"

"You carry a stiletto," said he, laughing, "and I don't like it."

"There--behold!" she exclaimed in a breathless voice, as she drew the
long steel bodkin from her hair, which fell in a dark and ripply
volume over her shoulders and bosom; "I am defenceless now," she
added, throwing it on the sofa; but Quentin was slow to accept the
challenge.

"Oh, Isidora, to what end is all this?" he asked, struggling with
himself, and almost remonstrating with her.  "Why allure me to love
you, as love you I shall?"

As he said this, the dark and lustrous eyes of the Castilian girl
filled with half-subdued fire; her lashes drooped, and she heaved a
long sigh.

"You speak of love," she said, in a low voice, while her bosom
swelled beneath its scarlet corset and the thin muslin habit-shirt
that was gathered round her slender throat; "all men are alike to a
woman who is not in love; but in my heart I feel an emotion which
tells me that if I loved there would be to me but one only in the
world--he, my lover!"

Her calm energy, and the deep sudden glance she shot at Quentin,
quite bewildered the poor fellow.

"Tell me," she resumed, while his left hand was caressed in both of
hers, and her right cheek yet rested on his shoulder, while the
massive curls of her hair fell over him, "is there not something
delicious in the mystery and tremulousness of love; to feel that we
are no longer two, but one--ONE in heart and soul, in thought and
sympathy?  Speak--you do not answer me--estrella mia--mi vida--mi
alma!" (my star--my life--my soul) she added, in a low but piercing
accent.

Trembling with deep emotion, Quentin pressed his lips to her burning
brow, and there ensued a long pause, during which she lay with her
forehead against his cheek.

"Listen to me, Quentin," said she, looking upward with swimming eyes;
"I would speak with you seriously, earnestly, from my heart."

"Niña de mi alma--about what?"

"Religion, love."

"You choose an odd time for it--but wherefore?"

"I would teach you mine," she whispered.

"Yours--and for what purpose?"

"That--that----"

"Nay, I have courage enough to hear anything, dearest; for what
purpose, mi querida?"

"That endearing term decides me--that we may be married, Quentin."

"I--senora!"

"You and I--what is there wonderful in that?"

Had a shell exploded between them, poor Quentin could not have been
more nonplussed than by this proposition.

"Flirtation is a very fine thing," says his Peninsular comrade,
Charles O'Malley, "but it's only a state of transition, after all;
the tadpole existence of the lover would be very great fun, if one
was never to become a frog under the hands of the parson."

Some such reflection occurred to Quentin, who stammered--

"But, Isidora, people require money to marry."

"Of course--sometimes."

"Well, I am not the heir of a shilling in the world."

"Nor am I the heiress of a pistole."

"Well, dearest Isidora----"

"Who should marry if we don't, whose circumstances are equal, and
whose position in the world is so exactly similar?  Ah, that we had
the Padre Florez here!"

Though this was said with the sweetest of smiles, Quentin failed to
see the force of her reasoning; but it was impossible to refrain from
kissing the rounded cheek that lay so near his own.

Then an emotion of compunction stole into his heart, and rousing her
from the delicious trance into which she seemed sinking, he withdrew
a little (for he had never been made love to before, so surprise gave
him courage), and then said--

"Isidora, this must not be--be calm and listen to me: I promised your
brother--what was it that he said to me?--oh, Isidora, I must not
love you; moreover, I am pledged to love a girl who is far, far away,
and--but be calm, I beseech you, and think of the future!"

She now sprung from his side to snatch her stiletto from the sofa
where it lay.  Whether she meant to use it against herself, or him,
or both, for a moment he could scarcely tell; her dark eyes were
filled with a lurid gleam, and her cheek was now deadly pale; one
little hand, white and tremulous, tore back her streaming and
dishevelled hair; the other clutched the hilt of the weapon.  She
gave a keen glance at the blade, and then, as if to place the
temptation to destroy beyond her reach, she snapped it to pieces and
cast them from her.

Then snatching up a lamp which Quentin had lighted but a short time
before, she rushed from the room, leaving him alone, bewildered and
in darkness.

Quentin hurried after, and called to her repeatedly; but there was no
response.  He heard a door closed with violence at a distance, and
then all became still--terribly still, save the now familiar sound of
the rain lashing the walls and windows of the villa in the darkness
without, and the howling of the wind, as it tore through the bleak
October woods.

Nearly an hour elapsed after this, and knowing her wild and impulsive
nature, his excitement and alarm for her safety became all but
insupportable.

"Oh heavens, if she should have destroyed herself!  Her death will be
laid to my charge."

There seemed to be no length her fiery rashness was not capable of
leading her, and not unnaturally Congreve's well-known couplet
occurred to his memory:--

  "Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turn'd,
  Nor hell a fury like a woman scorn'd!"



CHAPTER II.

THE POISONED WINE.

  "Whatever can untune th' harmonious soul,
  And its mild reasoning faculties control;
  Give false ideas, raise desires profane,
  And whirl in eddies the tumultuous brain;
  Mixed with curs'd art, she direfully around,
  Through all his nerves diffused the sad compound."
                                                OVID.


When Donna Isidora rushed from Quentin, she took her way unerringly
(as she knew the villa well) up several flights of stairs, through
passages and suites of apartments, where he could not have followed
her without a guide, until she reached a little room, which had been
the library and confessional of the family chaplain.

Remote from the rest of the house, its shelves full of books, its
table and desk littered with letters and papers, with little
religious pictures on the walls, a Madonna crowned by a white chaplet
on a bracket, a vase of withered lilies, and other little matters
indicative of taste, were all untouched as when the poor Padre Florez
had last been there.  In rambling over the villa, if Ribeaupierre's
dragoons had been in the chamber, they found nothing in it which they
deemed valuable enough to destroy or carry off.

Here it was that Donna Isidora had been, when, in a fit of petulance,
she had before absented herself from Quentin.  She set down the lamp,
and taking up a book which she had been previously perusing, and
which she had found lying upon the desk where the padre had left it
open, for its pages were covered with dust, she muttered--

"Let me read it again, and let me be assured; but oh, if I should
destroy him or myself!  What matter, then?  Better both die than that
_she_ should have him, whoever she is--wherever she is!  Oh, Padre
Florez--Padre Florez, if this anecdote you have left in my way should
be but a snare to death!"

Then she ground her little pearly teeth as she spoke, and turned with
trembling hands the dust-covered page which the chaplain's hand had
indicated for some scientific purpose with certain marks in pencil,
ere he had cast the volume on his desk, doubtless when scared from
the villa by the irruption of Ribeaupierre's dragoons.

It was a quarto volume on poisons, printed at Madrid, and the
paragraph which interested Isidora ran as follows.

"Note of a medicated wine, which produceth various emotions and
quaint fancies, but chiefly love and madness for a time in those who
partake thereof.

"Celius, an ancient Latin writer, telleth us of a company of young
men, who were drinking in a taberna of the luxurious city of
Agrigentum in Sicily, in those days when the tyrant Phalaris usurped
the sovereignty thereof, and who, on a sudden, were seized by a
malady of the brain.  Being in sight of the sea, they believed
themselves to be on board of a ship which was about to be cast away
in a storm, and while clamouring and shouting wildly, to save
themselves, they flung out of the windows the whole of the furniture;
and in this belief they continued for some hours, even after being
brought before a magistrate, whom they mistook for a pilot, and
besought in moving terms to steer the galley aright, lest she should
founder.

"On others, this wine acted as a philtre, and on seeing women, they
fell madly in love with them, threatening their own destruction if
their love were not responded to.

"I was persuaded in my own mind, says Celius, that this singular
malady could only arise from some adulteration of the wine, and
therefore had the landlord summoned before a magistrate, who
compelled him to confess that he was in the habit of adulterating
wines with a mixture of henbane and mandrakes (the root of which is
said to bear a resemblance to the human form), and which must thus
doubtless be considered the cause of this singular disease."

"Mandrake and henbane--a little of this mixture, and Quentin might
love me!  There is no sea here, and he could never fancy the villa to
be a ship," thought Isidora, weeping tears of bitterness and wounded
pride.  "If I can only bring this delirium on him, the real truth of
his heart may come out, and I shall learn whether he loves me or
loves me not, and who this other is that he prefers to me.  But if in
his madness--pho!  I can defend myself.  Oh, Padre Florez, was it a
good or bad angel that tempted you to leave this open book in my way,
and lured me to read it?"

A strange and deep dark smile came over the lovely face of this wild
and wilful girl as she took up the lamp and approached the cabinet of
the worthy Padre Florez, whose room seemed quite as much a laboratory
as a library, for goodly rows of phials and bottles contested for
place with the Bollandists, Acta Sanctorum, the Acts of the Council
of Trent, the Annals of Ferrereas, &c., for doubtless he had been the
doctor--a curer of bodies as well as of souls--in his comarca, or
district of Estremadura.

Hastily and impatiently she passed her lamp along the rows of little
drawers containing herbs and simples, and the shelves of phials, the
labels of which were quite enigmas to her; but on the third occasion
a cry of joy escaped her.

"Las Mandragoras--el Beleño!" she exclaimed, as she snatched two
small bottles, each full of a clear liquid, which bore those names.
But now a terrible yet natural doubt seized her.

"How much of these may I pour in this wine without destroying us
_both_?--what matter how much--what matter how much, so far as I am
concerned?  My life is neither a valuable nor a happy one; but
he--have I a right to destroy him, perhaps body and soul--ah, Madre
divina, body and soul, too!  No matter--I must learn the truth, and
whether he loves or only fears me."

In fact, the sudden passion which she had conceived for Quentin
seemed to have disordered her brain.

She heard him calling her at that moment, and as there was no time to
lose in further consideration, she filled a small phial from both
bottles, thrust it in her bosom, and left the room, previously, by
what impulse we know not, concealing the book of the padre, who could
little have foreseen the dangerous use to which its open pages would
be put.

With a heart that palpitated painfully between hope and fear, love
and anger, Isidora quitted the room of the padre to return to Quentin.

He, in the meantime, had become greatly alarmed by her protracted
absence, and procuring a light by flashing powder in the pan of one
of his pistols, he was proceeding in search of her through the
chambers of the villa, from the walls of which many a grim old fellow
in beard and breast-plate looked grimly and sternly at him out of his
frame:--many a grave hidalgo by Diego Velasquez were there, and many
a scriptural Murillo, sold, perhaps, by that great painter for bread
in the streets of his native Seville.

Of all the chateaux en Espagne, this Villa de Maciera, with its
episodes, was, perhaps, the last of which Quentin could have imagined
himself to be even temporarily master.  Gloomy, empty, and deserted,
it seemed to be veritably one of the mysterious mansions of which he
had read so much in the romances of Mrs. Anne Radcliffe, who was then
in the zenith of her fame.

"It is, indeed, a devil of a predicament," he muttered.

Again and again he called her name aloud, without hearing other
response than the echoes.  The place was mournfully still, and now
the wind and rain had ceased, and the night had become calm.  Well,
there was some comfort in that; with morning he might resume his
journey; but this Spanish girl--his heart trembled for her, for there
seemed to be no extravagant impulse to which she was not capable of
giving way.

To have responded to her wayward love, and then to have "levanted" on
the first convenient opportunity, "a way we (sometimes) have in the
army," might have been the treacherous measure adopted by many; but
Quentin, apart from his admiration of her beauty, had a sincere
regard for the girl, and though young in years, felt older by
experience than those years warranted.

He thought she might have retired to her room--to rest, perhaps; yet
he could not hear her breathing, for when he listened at the door,
all was still within.

He knocked gently, but there was no response, so pushing it open, he
entered.  Isidora had told him that this was the apartment she
usually occupied when residing with the Condesa de Maciera.

It was the perfection of a little bed-chamber; elaborate candelabra
of cut crystal glittered like prisms on the white marble mantelpiece,
the central ornament of which was an exquisite crucifix of ivory.
The floor was of polished oak, and the walls were hung with some
charming water-colour landscapes of the adjacent mountain scenery, in
chaste and narrow frames: and then the little bed, half buried amid
muslin curtains of the purest white, was much more like an English
than a Spanish one.

Tent-form, the flowing drapery depended from a gilt coronet; the
pillows, edged with the finest lace, were all untouched and
unpressed, so Donna Isidora was not there.

Quentin started as he saw her figure suddenly reflected in a large
cheval-glass.  She was standing behind him, near the door of the
apartment, regarding him with an expression of mournful interest in
her eyes; her face pale as death, her hair flowing and dishevelled
over her shoulders, her hands pressed upon her bosom, and seeming
wondrously white when contrasted with the deep scarlet velvet of her
corset; her flounces of black and scarlet, and the taper legs ending
in the pretty Cordovan shoes, making altogether a very charming
portrait.

"Senor," she said, in a low voice, "what were you seeking here?"

"I sought you, Isidora; I became seriously alarmed----"

"You do, then, care for me, senor--a little?"

"Care for you, dearest Isidora----"

"Yet you drove me away from you!" she said, in a voice full of tender
reproach.

"Do not say so," replied Quentin, taking her hot and trembling hands
in his, and feeling very bewildered indeed.

"Your studied coldness repelled me.  Ah, Dios mio! how calm, how
collected you are, and I--! get me some water, friend--or some wine,
rather; and this other--this other--she----"

"Who, senora?"

"Some wine, my friend.  I am cold and flushed by turns.  Some wine, I
implore you!"

"Permit me to lead you from this," said Quentin, conducting her back
to the boudoir, where he seated her on the sofa by his side, and
endeavoured to soothe her; but the memory of the late scene, and the
fire of jealousy that glowed in her heart, filled it with mingled
anger and love.

While Quentin, all unconscious of what was about to ensue, was
untwisting the wire of a champagne flask, she--while the light seemed
to flash from her eyes, and her cheek flushed deeply--emptied the
entire contents of her secret phial into a crystal goblet, and when
the sparkling wine, with its pink tint and myriad globules, frothed
and effervesced, as Quentin poured it in, the poison--for such it
was--became at once concealed.

"Drink with me," said she, kissing the cup and presenting it to him;
then, feverish and excited as he was, he took a deep draught; after
which, with another of her strange smiles, the donna drank the rest,
and, as she did so, the pallor of her little face, and the unnatural
light in her eyes, attracted the attention of Quentin.

He took her hands in his, and began to speak, saying he knew not
what, for he seemed to have lost all control over his tongue; then
the room appeared to swim round him, while objects became wavering
and indistinct.

"What--what is this that is coming over me?" he exclaimed.

"Death, perhaps," said Isidora, laying her head on his shoulder, and
pressing his hand to her lips; "but, mi vida--mi querido--you will
not go from me to her?"

"To whom?"

"She--that other whom you love?"

"Flora--Flora Warrender!" exclaimed Quentin, wildly, as the potent
wine and its dangerous adjuncts began to affect his brain.

Whether the padre's beleño was the exact compound referred to by his
ancient authority, we are not prepared to say, but the effect of the
cup imbibed by Quentin was sufficiently disastrous.

The objects in the room began to multiply with wonderful rapidity;
the white silk drapery of the walls seemed to be covered with falling
stars; the pale blue damask curtains of the windows assumed strange
shapes, and appeared to wave to and fro.  The bronze statuettes on
the mantelpiece, the tables and buffets, appeared to be performing
fandangos and other fantastic dances, and, as the delirium crept over
him, Quentin grasped at the back of a sofa to save himself from
falling, while Isidora still clasped him in her arms; and now he
believed her to be Flora Warrender, and as such addressed, and even
caressed her.

Another draught of pure champagne, which he took greedily to quench
the burning thirst that now seized him, completed the temporary
overthrow of his reason.

Isidora seemed to pass away, and Flora Warrender took her place.  He
wept as he kissed her hands, and spoke with sorrow of their long,
long separation; of the dangers and privations he had undergone, and
of Cosmo's tyranny; of the joy with which he beheld her again, and
now, that they never more would part; and thus, with every endearing
word, he unconsciously stabbed his rash and impetuous Spaniard, who,
although he spoke in English, and she was half delirious with the
wine, knew too well that when Quentin kissed her thick, dark wavy
hair that curled over her broad low forehead, and pressed her hand to
his heart, he was thinking of another, for whom these endearments
were intended.

At last, stupefaction came over him, and sinking on a fauteuil, he
remembered no more.



CHAPTER III.

PADRE FLOREZ.

  "Not yet--I never knew till now
    How precious life could be;
  My heart is full of love--O Death,
    I cannot come with thee!
  Not yet--the flowers are in my path,
    The sun is in the sky;
  Not yet, my heart is full of hope--
    I cannot bear to die."--L.E.L.


On recovering from the insensibility that had come upon him, Quentin
had no idea of what period of time had elapsed since the occurrence
of the episode we have just described.  In fact, he had considerable
difficulty in remembering where he was, so maddened was he by a
burning heat, by pricking pains through all his system, an
intolerable thirst, an aching head, and a throat and tongue that were
rough and dry.  His temples throbbed fearfully, his pulse was quick;
there was a clamorous anxiety in his mind he knew not why or
wherefore; he had a recurrent hiccough; and, though he knew it not,
these were all the symptoms of being dangerously poisoned.

The morning was bright and sunny.  Refreshed by the past rains, the
rows of orange-trees around the stately terrace, the lawn of the
villa, the acacias that covered its walls, and the clumps of arbutus
and beech about it, looked fresh and green.

Producing a grateful sensation, the cool morning breeze fanned his
throbbing temples, and on rousing himself, Quentin found that he was
lying on the marble terrace near the bronze fountain, of the cool and
sparkling water of which he drank deeply, as he had frequently done
before, while almost unconscious, by mere instinct, for now he had no
memory of it.

Weak, faint, and giddy, and feeling seriously ill, he staggered up
and laved his hands and brow in the marble basin; then he endeavoured
to reflect or consider how his present predicament came about.  Donna
Isidora, where was she? and where was Flora Warrender? for he had
misty memories of the endearments of both.

It seemed that overnight he had a strange dream that the former--or
could it be the latter?--had been carried off by French soldiers, and
that he had neither the power to succour or to save her.

This, however, was no dream, but a reality, for a patrol of French
cavalry, seeing lights in the villa, which they believed to be
deserted, had ridden upon the terrace and proceeded to search the
place.  A few dismounted, and, armed with their swords and pistols,
entered the house.  Amid her terror on witnessing the unexpected
stupefaction that had come over Quentin, the donna heard the clank of
hoofs on the terrace, and then the jingle of spurs and steel
scabbards on the tesselated floor of the vestibule.

Alarm lest her brother had come in search of her, and had tracked
them hither, was her first emotion.  Covering the insensible form of
Quentin with the blue damask drapery of a window, near which he had
sunk to sleep upon a fauteuil, she stooped and kissed his flushed
forehead; then taking a lamp, she endeavoured to make her way to the
room of the Padre Florez, which she considered alike remote and
secure; but her light was seen flashing from story to story up the
great marble staircase.

"En avant, mes braves," cried an officer, laughing; "'tis only a
petticoat--follow, and capture."

The dismounted Chasseurs uttered a shout, and giving chase, soon
secured the unfortunate Isidora.

Shrieking, she was borne into the open air; her resistance, which was
desperate, only serving to provoke much coarse laughter and joking.
A few minutes after this, she found herself trussed like a bundle of
hay to the crupper of a troop-horse, and en route for Valencia de
Alcantara, the captive of a smart young officer of Chasseurs à
cheval, who further secured her close to his own person by a
waist-belt.  By alternate caresses and jests, he endeavoured to
soothe her fears, her grief, and her passion; but seeing that the
girl was beautiful, he was determined not to release her, for he was
no other than our former jovial acquaintance, Eugene de Ribeaupierre,
the sous-lieutenant of the 24th Chasseurs.

Partially roused by the noise and by her cries, Quentin had staggered
to the terrace like one in a dream, and had fallen beside the
fountain, so that his misty memories of having seen her carried off
by French Chasseurs was no vision, but reality.  Yet, somehow, he
thought she might be in the villa after all, and he called her by
name repeatedly.

And then there were memories of Flora Warrender that floated
strangely through his brain.  It seemed that he had but recently seen
her, spoken with her, heard her voice, had embraced and clasped her
to his breast--that Flora, whom he thought was far, far away--the
Flora for whom he sorrowed and longed through the dreary hours of
many a march by night and day, whom he had dreamed of and prayed for.

What mystery--what madness was this?

The musical jangling of mule-bells was now heard, and ere long other
actors came upon the scene, as some jovial muleteers, cracking their
whips and their jokes, ascended the steps of the terrace, accompanied
by a tall, thin, and reverend-looking padre, wearing a huge shovel
hat and a long black serge soutan, the buttons of which, a close row,
extended from his chin to his ankles.

The old Condesa de Maciera, who, after being again and again
terrified and harassed by the outrages of the plundering French
patrols and foraging parties, had at last fled with all her household
to the small Portuguese town of Marvao, had now sent her chaplain,
the Padre Florez, back to see what was the state of matters at her
villa, and he arrived thus most opportunely for Quentin Kennedy,
whose uniform at once secured him the interest both of the padre and
the muleteers.

The latter proved luckily to be Ramon Campillo, of Miranda del Ebro,
his confrère Ignacio Noain, and others, whom Quentin had met before,
and who at once recognised him and overwhelmed him with questions, to
which he found the utter impossibility of giving satisfactory replies.

His present state was as puzzling to himself as to the padre, who had
him conveyed within doors, and, strangely enough, into the boudoir,
the features of which brought back to Quentin's memory some of the
exciting and bewildering passages of last night.  The unextinguished
lamp yet smoked on the table, broken crystal cups and champagne
flasks, chairs overturned, and a phial of very suspicious aspect, all
attracted the attention of Padre Florez.  As he examined the latter,
and applied his nose and lips to the mouth, while endeavouring to
discover what the contents had been, he changed colour, and became
visibly excited.

"Look to the stranger--what a mere boy he is!--but look to him,
Ramon, mi hijo," said he, "while I go to my room--my laboratory--and
see what I can do for him."

The padre, who had a deep and friendly interest in the household of
his patrona the countess-dowager, and of the young Conde now serving
with the guerilla band of Baltasar de Saldos, looked anxiously
through the suites of rooms as he proceeded, sighing over the slashed
Murillos and smashed mirrors, and the too evident sabre-cuts in the
richly-carved cabinets of oak and ebony, in the gilded consoles, the
beautiful tables of marqueterie; and he groaned at last over the
ruins of some alabaster statuettes and great jars of Sèvres and
majolica, which, in the last night's search, the French had wantonly
dashed to pieces.

Ere long, he reached his own room, and on looking about, he missed at
once his quarto volume on poisons, the work he had been
studying--particularly that fatal passage from Celius--when the
French dragoons drove the whole household from the villa.  It was
gone; but in its place on the desk he found the two bottles left by
Isidora, the decoctions of mandrake and henbane.  Here was a clue to
the illness of the Ingles below; but how had the matter come to pass?
Had he poisoned himself?  This the padre doubted; but as an instant
remedy was necessary, an inquiry and explanation would follow the
cure.

Selecting certain simples, the Padre Florez hurried back to his
patient, who was stretched on the sofa of the boudoir in a very
bewildered condition, endeavouring to understand and reply to the
somewhat earnest and impetuous inquiries of Ramon and his brother
muleteers, who were now en route from Marvao to Portalegre--news
which could not fail to interest Quentin; but he replied only by a
languid and haggard smile.

He told them, however, that the sister of Don Baltasar de Saldos was
in the villa, and implored them to search for her, which they did, in
considerable excitement and surprise, leaving, as Ramon said, not
even a rat-hole unexamined, but no trace of her could be found.  Then
Quentin rather surprised them by saying, impetuously, that she had
been carried off by the French.

"Is it a dream, is she dead, or has she fled?" he asked of himself
again and again; "no, no; she would never leave me willingly, her
insane love forbids the idea."

Ramon, in searching for the sister of the formidable guerilla chief,
whose name was already finding an echo in every Castilian heart,
found Quentin's cap, sabre, and pistols, and fortunately the despatch
or reply of Don Baltasar to Sir John Hope.  Ignacio Noain found a
lady's shoe of Cordovan leather, which the padre identified as having
belonged to Donna Isidora.  This served to corroborate the strange
story of Quentin; but Florez remembered that the donna was in the
habit of visiting the countess at the villa, and this little slipper
might have been left behind by her on some occasion.  It was found,
however, in the vestibule, where it had fallen from her foot as the
dragoons somewhat roughly dragged her away.

"In what way came this young stranger to speak of De Saldos' sister
at all?  Had they eloped together?  If so," thought the padre, "then
Heaven help the Englishman, for his doom is sealed!"

"I am ill--ill, padre--ill in body and sick at heart!" said Quentin
faintly, as Florez, watch in hand, felt his pulse.

"You appear to have been poisoned, my poor boy," said he.

"Poisoned?" repeated Quentin, as a terrible fear and suspicion of
Isidora's revengeful pride rushed upon him.

"Yes--beyond a doubt."

"Shall I die, padre?" he asked in an agitated voice.

"Oh no, my son, there is no fear of that--I shall cure you by a few
simple remedies."

Quentin felt greatly relieved in mind on hearing this; but at present
thirst was his chief merit, with an internal heat and pain that gave
him no rest.

"Of what were you partaking last night?"

"Of wine only--champagne, which I found in a cabinet of the comedero
(dining-room)."

"There is but one crystal cup remaining here unbroken."

"From that I drank it," said Quentin, who, in his delirium, had
smashed a supper equipage of his own collecting.

It was a large goblet of Venetian crystal, studded with
brilliantly-coloured stones.  The Padre Florez looked at the dregs
and shook his white head.

"This wine has been drugged--there is a fresh mystery here!  And
Donna Isidora de Saldos was with you last night--you are assured of
that?"

"As sure as that I live and breathe, Senor Padre."

"Alone?" continued the priest, with knitted brows.

"Alone."

"How came it to pass that her brother entrusted her with you?" asked
the padre, suspiciously.

Quentin was too ill to explain that she had been sent with him in
disguise, as the mother of the guerilla Trevino; and Padre Florez,
who naturally conceived the idea that they had eloped as lovers, and
had quarrelled, to prevent a great tragedy, set about curing him.

He compelled him to drink quantities of new milk and salad oil, both
of which he procured from the muleteers who were bivouacking on the
terrace; after this, he gave him warm water mixed with the same oil,
and fresh butter, to provoke intense sickness, to destroy the
acrimony of the poison, and to prevent it doing injury to the bowels.

"If the pain continues, Ramon, we shall have to kill a sheep," said
the padre, "and apply its intestines, reeking hot, to the stomach of
the patient; 'tis a remedy I have never known to fail in allaying
spasms there, especially if the sheep be a moreno."

By nightfall, however, thanks to the good padre's real skill, which
was superior to his superstition in the efficacy of black-faced
mutton, Quentin was quite relieved, and after a time related his
whole story from the time of his leaving Herreruela.  Florez listened
to him with considerable interest, approved of all he had done, and
gave him much good advice; but added that he feared De Saldos would
hold him accountable for the loss of his sister, for whose treatment,
and of whose ultimate fate among the French, he had the greatest
apprehension.  He added that his visit to the villa seemed to have
been a special interposition of heaven in Quentin's favour, as he
would inevitably have died in mortal agonies but for the prompt and
simple applications which saved him.

He desired Ramon to take special charge of the patient to Portalegre;
to see that by the way he got nothing stronger for food than milk,
gruel, or barley broth, and no wine whatever; and then giving them
all his benediction, which the muleteers received on their knees with
uncovered heads, he stuck his shovel hat on his worthy old cranium,
the thin hairs of which were white as snow, mounted his sleek mule,
and pricking its dapple flanks with his box stirrup-irons, departed
for Marvao, by the way of Valencia de Alcantara, where he hoped to
trace, and perhaps release the unfortunate girl from her captors.

Impatient though the muleteers were to proceed with their train of
mules, which were laden chiefly with wine for Sir John Hope's
division, they agreed to remain for a night at the villa, where their
cattle grazed on the lawn.

With dawn next day they set forth, with Quentin riding at the head of
the train, mounted on Madrina, and feeling very much like one in a
dream.

"Come, Ignacio Noain, a stirrup-cup ere we go," said Ramon, as he
came forth, cracking his enormous whip, a blunderbuss slung on his
back, and his sombrero rakishly cocked over his left eye.

Ignacio handed a cupful of wine to his leader.

"Demonio!" said the latter, "this smacks of the borrachio skin."

"To me it was luscious as a melon of Abrantes in June, after the
coarse aguardiente we drank last night," said Ignacio, who looked
rather bloodshot about the eyes.

"Of course you haven't tried the casks of Valdepenas on the three
leading mules?" said Ramon, with a cunning leer.

"They are for the English general and his staff, so every cask is
guarded by an outer one."

"And thus your gimlet failed to reach the wine?"

"Precisely so."

"Maldita! the merchant who sold that wine must either be a rogue at
heart, or an old muleteer, to be so well up to all the tricks of the
road.  And now, senor, here is milk for you; no wine; we must
remember the orders of Padre Florez," said Ramon, presenting Quentin
with a bowl of new goat's-milk, as he sat, pale as a spectre, on the
demipique saddle with which Madrina was accoutred, and which, in
addition to all her other fringe and worsted trappings, gave that
stately pet-mare very much the aspect of a mummer's nag.

Quentin, though refreshed and revived by the cool and delicious
morning air, and cheered by the hope of being soon at head-quarters
with his present jovial guides, felt sad and bewildered when he
thought of Isidora, her beauty, her impetuous spirit, the wild and
sudden love she had professed for himself, and the too probable
horror of her fate in the hands of the French, who were so
unscrupulous towards the Spaniards and Portuguese.

Then the mystery of the poison; it was no doubt, he hoped, some fatal
mistake, but one which might never be solved or explained.

In fancy he seemed still to see her wondrous dark eyes, with their
thick black upper and lower lashes, while her soft musical voice
seemed to mingle with the melodious bells of the long train of mules
at the head of which Madrina paced as guide; and as they descended
the vine-clad hills towards the frontiers of Portugal, he turned in
his saddle to give a farewell glance at the deserted Villa de Maciera.



CHAPTER IV.

THE ARMY MARCHES.

  "No martial shout is there--in silence dread,
  Save the dull cadence of the soldier's tread,
  Or where the measured beat of distant drum
  Tells forth their slow advance--they come! they come!
  On!  England, on! and thou, O Scotland, raise,
  'Midst Lusias' wilds, thy shout of other days,
  Till grim Alcoba catch thy slogan roar,
  And trembling, glisten to thy blue claymore."
                            LORD GRENVILLE.--1813.


On the 2nd day of November, 1808, the division of Sir John Hope broke
up from its cantonments at Portalegre, and by successive regiments
began its march towards Spain.

The whole British army in Portugal was now pouring forward, and it
was calculated that when Sir John Moore effected a junction with the
Spanish armies, the united forces would amount to one hundred and
thirteen thousand men, to oppose the vast power of France, which was
divided into eight corps, led by the first soldiers of the Empire,
the Marshal-Dukes of Belluno, Istria, Cornegliano, Treviso,
Elchingen, Abrantes, Generals St. Cyr and Lefebre.

To prevent this junction was the first measure of the French,
twenty-five thousand of whom attacked the main body of Blake's army
on the 31st of October, and, after an obstinate conflict of eight
hours, forced him back upon Valmeseda.  He was without artillery,
otherwise this famous Irish soldier of fortune might have held the
ground against them, even though outnumbered as he was by eight
thousand bayonets.

Meanwhile, Napoleon in person advanced to Burgos, where he
established his head-quarters, and from whence he issued an edict in
the name of his brother Joseph, as King of Spain, granting a pardon
to all Spaniards, soldiers, guerillas, and others, who, within one
month after his arrival at Madrid, would lay down their arms and
renounce all connextion with Great Britain.  Soon after Madrid fell
into his hands, either by a memory of the terrors of Zaragossa or the
treachery of Morla, though sixty thousand Spaniards were ready to
defend its streets and gates!

Sir John Moore was a young Scotch officer of great experience.  He
had served at the capture of Corsica, and led the stormers of the
Mozzello Fort amid a shower of shot, shell, and hand-grenades.  He
was present at the capture of many of the West India islands; he had
served in the Irish Rebellion, the disastrous expedition to Holland,
and the glorious one to Egypt, which wrested that country from the
French; and he had been Commander-in-chief in the Mediterranean and
Sweden.  Though superseded temporarily by the vacillating ministry
who sent Sir Harry Burrard to Portugal, he was still modestly content
to act as third in command, nobly saying, that "he would never refuse
to serve his country while he was able, and that if the King
commanded him to act as ensign, he would obey him."

It was this chivalrous spirit which, on arriving in Portugal after
the battle of Vimiera, made him declare to Sir Hew Dalrymple, that as
Sir Arthur Wellesley had done so much in winning that victory and the
battle of Roleia, it was but fair that _he_ should still continue to
take the lead in the task of freeing Portugal from the French; and
Moore offered generously, "if the good of the service required it, to
execute any part of the campaign allotted to him, without interfering
with Sir Arthur."

After he obtained the command, the utmost activity prevailed at
head-quarters to forward the expedition for the relief of the Spanish
Peninsula, though he was left by Government almost without money.
"He was very desirous," says Napier, "that troops who had a journey
of six hundred miles to make, previous to meeting the enemy, should
not, at the commencement, be overwhelmed by the torrents of rain,
which in Portugal descend at this period with such violence as to
destroy the shoes, ammunition, and accoutrements of the soldier, and
render him almost unfit for service."

In eight days he had his troops ready, and most of them in motion;
but difficulties soon occurred.  The lazy Portuguese asserted that it
was impracticable to carry siege, or even field artillery, by the
mule and horse paths which traversed their vast mountain sierras; but
Sir John Moore discovered on his march that the roads, though very
bad, were open enough for the purpose; but the knowledge came rather
too late.

The artillery, consisting of twenty-four pieces, with a thousand
cavalry, he sent with the division of Sir John Hope, whose orders
were to march by Elvas on the Madrid road.  Moore retained one
brigade of six-pounders at head-quarters.

Two brigades of infantry, under General Paget, were to march by Elvas
and Alcantara.  Two others, under Marshal Beresford, by the way of
Coimbra, and three more, under General Fraser, were to move by the
city of Abrantes, near the right bank of the Tagus.

The _whole_ to unite at Salamanca, the general rendezvous, where Sir
John Hope and Sir David Baird, with their divisions, were to join, if
they failed to do so at Valladolid.

Such was the scheme of Sir John Moore for commencing operations
against the Emperor of France at the head of his mighty legions.

Before the troops marched, he warned them in general orders, that the
Spaniards were a nation by habit and nature grave, austere, orderly,
and sober, but prone to ire and easily insulted; he therefore sought
to impress upon his soldiers the propriety of accommodating
themselves to the manners of those they were going among, and neither
by intemperance of conduct or language, to shock a people who were
grateful to Britain for an alliance which was to free them from the
bondage of France, and to restore them to their ancient liberty and
independence.

"Upon entering Spain," concludes this most judicious order, "as a
compliment to the nation, the army will wear the _Red cockade_, in
addition to their own.  For this purpose, cockades are ordered for
the non-commissioned officers and men; they will be sent from Madrid;
but in the meantime officers are requested to provide them and put
them on, as soon as they pass the frontier."

Such expedition did the gallant Moore make, that he out-marched his
magazines; and to use his own words, "the army ran the risk of
finding itself in front of the enemy, with no more ammunition than
the men carried in their pouches."

And now, to resume our humble story, it was on the 2nd of November,
the very day on which the second division was to march, that the
Muleteer Ramon of Miranda and his train entered Portalegre about
daybreak, with Quentin Kennedy riding on Madrina, looking pale,
weary, and exhausted.

"Por Dios! we have just come in time, senor," said Ramon; "another
hour, and even the rear guard would have been difficult to overtake.
Here I shall leave you and my casks of Valdepenas, and then, ho for
Lisbon!"

The sun had not yet risen, and the dull November haze that rolled
from the valleys along the sombre slopes of the rocky sierras, yet
hovered over the quaint little episcopal city of Portalegre.  The
church bells and those of the Santa Engracia convent (at which
Quentin was to have left poor Isidora) were ringing out a farewell
peal to the departing British, and prayers for the success of their
arms were mingled with the morning matins at every altar in the
bishopric.  The narrow streets were blocked up with sombre crowds of
people, and by troops in heavy marching order.  All betokened hasty
preparations for advancing to the front, and amid the loud vivas of
the Portuguese could be heard the wailing of the poor soldiers' wives
who were to be left behind for on the 10th October, Sir John Moore,
who, though brave as a lion, was tender as a woman, and whose love
and devotion for his mother was a leading characteristic throughout
his short but brilliant life, issued the following order:--

"As in the course of the long march which the army is about to
undertake, and where no carls will be allowed, the women would
unavoidably be exposed to the greatest hardship and distress,
commanding officers are, therefore, desired to use their endeavours
to prevent as many as possible, _particularly those having young
children_, or such as are not stout or equal to fatigue, from
following the army.  An officer will be charged to draw their
rations, and they will be sent back to England by the first good
opportunity; and, when landed, they will receive the same allowance
which they would have been entitled to if they had not embarked, to
enable them to reach their homes."

Unfortunately, implicit obedience was not paid to this humane order,
and thus many women, with their children, followed the troops in
secret, and thus many, if not all, perished by the way, during the
horrors of the retreat to Corunna.

Among these, inspired by love and trust, who courageously followed
the army on foot and in secrecy, or sometimes mounted on a poor lean
burro, which they grazed by the wayside, was the wife of Allan
Grange, the poor sergeant, reduced at Colchester barracks, a fragile
and ailing creature, who bore a pale, sickly, and consumptive little
baby at her breast.

The advanced guard of Light Dragoons, with, oats and forage trussed
in nets and bags upon the cruppers, had already been detailed, and
were in their saddles, half a mile in front of the city, at the base
of the hill on which it stands.

The twenty-four pieces of artillery were all in readiness, the trails
limbered up and the horses traced, with water-buckets, spare wheels
and forge-waggon, the gunners in their seats and saddles.

The massed columns of infantry were in heavy marching order, with
great-coats rolled, canteens and havresacks slung crosswise, with
colours, in some instances cased, and locks hammerstalled; the
cavalry were in the great plaza, in close column of troops, every man
riding with a net of forage (chopped straw or whins) behind him; the
baggage-animals--horses, mules, and burros--already laden with tents,
bags, beds, boxes, and camp-kettles, amid the cracking of whips, and
oaths uttered in English, Irish, Spanish, and Portuguese, were driven
forth to make way for the troops, who, while staff and other officers
galloped about as if possessed by so many devils, began their march
for Spain.

Bewildered by the confusion and hurly-burly of the scene amid which
he so suddenly found himself, and thrust by the pressure of the crowd
against the wall of the Santa Engracia convent, Quentin sat in the
saddle of Madrina and saw nearly the whole division of Sir John Hope
defile before him, a long and glittering array, for as the golden
light of the sun poured along the picturesque vista of the ancient
street, and the white rolling mists were dispelled or exhaled upward,
the burnished barrels, bayonets, and sword-blades, the polished
brasses of the accoutrements, and the glazed tops of the shakos, all
flashed and shone, while the thoroughfares resounded to the tramp of
horse and foot, spurs, scabbards, and chain bridles--to the sharp
blare of the cavalry trumpets, the drums of the infantry, and the
hoarse war pipes of the plaided Highlanders--the wild, strange music
that Scotsmen only _feel_ or understand.

Many of the soldiers were pale and wan, from the comfortless wards of
Belem hospital, and many a bandaged head, many an arm in a scarf, and
plaster on a cheek, showed the part they had borne at Roleia and
Vimiera, and in the struggle which had just freed Portugal from those
who aimed at the conquest of Europe.

Uniforms already old and thriftily patched with cloth of divers
colours, housings faded, chabraques worn bare, gun carriages minus
paint and oil, as they rumbled along; all spoke of service and hard
work--of harder work and keener service yet to come!

And now advanced a corps, on hearing the well-known air played by
whose drums and fifes, Quentin made a leap from the saddle of
Madrina, and forced a passage through the dense crowd, for it was the
25th, "The King's Own Borderers," with the Castle of Edinburgh
shining on their colours, and all their old honours--"Nisi Dominus
Frustra," Egypt, and Egmont-op-Zee, that debouched into the main
street of Portalegre in a dense close column of sections, nine
hundred men, all marching as one to their old quick step of a
thousand memories--

  "All the blue bonnets are bound for the border,"

or General Leslie's march to Long-Marston Moor in the days of the
great civil war.

Endued with fresh strength by the sight of the regiment, Quentin
burst through the crowd, and, reaching the grenadiers, grasped the
hand of Rowland Askerne, on whose breast he saw a Portuguese order
glittering.

"Quentin Kennedy, by all that's wonderful!" exclaimed the tall
captain, grasping his hand warmly in return.  "Quentin, my boy, how
goes it?"

"Hallo! talk of the----" began Monkton, clapping him on the back; "we
were just talking about you--thought you lost, gone, and all that
sort of thing, a martyr to duty; but welcome back, my dear lad!"

"Where is old Major Middleton?"

"With Buckle in rear of the column."

"And little Boyle?"

"Oh, Pimple is with Colyear carrying the colours; but where have you
been, and what the deuce have you been about, eh?"

"You look pale and weary to begin a march this morning, sir," said
some of the soldiers, kindly, for Quentin was a favourite with them
all.

"You must have a horse," said Askerne: "you look absolutely ill,
Quentin; how is this?"

"It is a long story, Askerne," replied Kennedy, with a haggard smile.

"Egad, I thought, and we _all_ thought, the duty one beyond your
years and experience."

"Make way here in front, please; mark time, the grenadiers," said an
authoritative voice as the column issued from the city gate, and an
officer who nearly rode our hero down, pushed his horse between the
band and the first section of the grenadier company.  Quentin looked
indignantly up, and found the cold, stern, and uncompromising eye of
Cosmo, the Master of Rohallion, steadily bent upon him.

"You have returned, sir, _at last_?" was his stiff response to
Quentin's hasty salute.

"It is little short of a miracle that I ever returned at all, Colonel
Crawford; I have undergone no small danger I beg to assure you, and
have but this instant entered Portalegre.  I have acquitted myself of
the duty with which the general did me the honour to entrust me.  The
junction will be formed with our division on the march, and I have a
despatch from the Guerilla Chief."

"For whom?"

"Sir John Hope, sir; shall I give it to him in person?"

"No--I shall myself deliver it," replied Cosmo, who feared naturally
the favourable impression which Quentin might make on the good
general, to whom he had been represented as unworthy; "get your
musket and fall in with your company as soon as possible.  We shall
have some _other_ work cut out for you ere long," added Cosmo, with a
dark and scornful smile, as he took, or rather snatched the despatch
from Quentin, who seemed more fit for a sick bed than for marching
among the sturdy grenadiers of the Borderers; but for that day he was
attached to the baggage guard, which was under Lieutenant Colville,
and this arrangement for his comfort was made by the kindness of the
old halberdier Norman Calder, who was now sergeant-major.  He rode
the spare horse of Major Middleton, a boon but for which he could
never have kept up with the troops.

With the baggage marched the rear guard of the division, having with
it the sick, the drunk, disorderly, and prisoners, together with a
medley of followers of a not very reputable kind, whose presence was
not conducive to reflection or comfort, and who noisily scorned alike
control or discipline.

As Quentin was riding thus, he was passed from the rear by the
general and his staff.  The former gave him a keen and inquiring
glance, answered his salute briefly, and passed on.  Whether Cosmo
had mentioned him favourably, or the reverse, in delivering the
despatch of Don Baltasar, he knew not; but he knew that when once the
spiteful element attains ascendancy in the human heart, there is no
mode in which it will not seek to be gratified and no measure to its
malignity, and he sighed over an enmity that he dared neither to
grapple with or hope to overcome; and all this he owed to the
preference of Flora Warrender for him--her early friend and playmate
in youth.

Well, there was some consolation in the cause!

Though his reception by the Master of Rohallion neither disappointed
nor shocked him, it chilled the poor lad's heart, which grew heavy as
he saw how unavailing and how fruitless were all his efforts to
deserve praise or to win honour!



CHAPTER V.

HALT AT AZUMAR.

  "Pleasures fled hence, wide now's the gulf between us;
  Stern Mars has routed Bacchus and sweet Venus:
  I can no more--the lamp's fast fading ray
  Reminds me of parade ere break of day,
  Where, shivering, I must strut, though bleak the morning,
  Roused by the hateful drummer's early warning.
  Come, then, my boat-cloak, let me wrap thee round,
  And snore in concert stretched upon the ground."
                                            _An Elegy._


The noisy racket maintained by those who were in custody of the
rear-guard, the voices of others who whipped or cheered on the long
string of baggage animals (Evora horses, Castilian mules, and sturdy
burros or donkeys), the various novel sights and sounds incident to
the march of Hope's division, together with the appearance of the
division itself winding down the deep valleys and up the steep
mountains like a long and glittering snake, amid clouds of white
dust, out of which the sheen of arms and the waving of colours came
incessantly, won Quentin from his sadder thoughts, and he began to
feel, after all he had undergone, an emotion, of joy on finding
himself among his old comrades--a joy that can only be known by a
soldier--by one forming a part of that great and permanent, but
almost always happy family, a regiment of the line.

The morning was bright and breezy; the large floating clouds cast
their flying shadows over the sunlit landscape at times, adding alike
to its beauty and the striking effect of the marching columns.

Weary of the dark and sallow Spaniards, Quentin's eyes had run along
the ranks of the 25th, and their familiar faces, which seemed so fair
and ruddy when contrasted with those of the nations they had come to
free, were pleasant to look upon.

Their colours, with the castle triple-towered and the city motto; the
familiar bugle calls, and more than all, the old quick-step of
General Leslie, which came floating rearward from time to time when
the corps traversed an eminence, all spake to him of his new but
moveable home, and the new associations he had learned to love.

Cosmo--the impracticable and inscrutable--Cosmo Crawford--alone was
the feature there that marred his prospects and blighted his pleasure!

He felt a sincere regret for poor Isidora, and this was not unmingled
with a little selfish dread of her brother, De Saldos, the scowling
Trevino, and others, when those guerillas joined the division, which
they would probably do in the course of a day or so; and what answer
would he make to them when they--and chiefly her brother--asked for
the missing donna?  He felt himself, indeed, between the horns of a
dilemma, and many unpleasant forebodings mingled with his dreams of a
brilliant future.

Amid these ideas recurred the longing to write home (how long, long
seemed the time that had elapsed since he left it!) that the good
Lord Rohallion and the gentle Lady Winifred--that dear Flora, and the
old quartermaster too, might learn something of what he had seen, and
done, and undergone since last they parted.

Had Cosmo, in any of his letters, ever written to announce that he
was serving with the Borderers?

This was a question Quentin had frequently asked of himself, and he
felt certain that the colonel had not done so, as in the other
instance, and unless he had been cruelly misrepresented, Lord
Rohallion or worthy John Girvan, and his old mentor the quaint
dominie, would assuredly have written to him long since.  Thus it was
evident that in his correspondence with those at home in Carrick, the
haughty Master had totally ignored his name.

Quentin's passion for Flora Warrender was a boyish devotion that
mingled with all his love and all his memories of home.  She was
still a guiding star to his heart and hopes, the impulse of every
thought, the mainspring of every act and deed; and thus Quentin felt
that while this dear girl at home loved him--as sister, friend, and
sweetheart all combined, the spiteful hauteur of Cosmo was innocuous
and pointless indeed.

As the paymaster of the regiment was riding with the rear-guard,
Quentin lost no time in placing in his hands a sufficient number of
those gold moidores that were found in the repositories of the late
Corporal Raoul, of the 24th Chasseurs a Cheval (the spoil so
liberally shared with him by Ribeaupierre), for the purpose of having
them transmitted by bill or otherwise to the quartermaster at
Rohallion, to repay the good man for the forty pounds he had placed
at his disposal on the night he left the castle to return no more;
and the fact of this debt being off his conscience made his spirit
more buoyant than ever.

They were now marching through the province of Alentejo, the land of
wine and oil, the granary of Portugal.  Long-bearded goats and great
bristly swine were to be seen in all the pastures, but few or no
horned cattle.  Proceeding on a line parallel with the Spanish
frontier, they passed through the fortified town of Alegrete, which
is moated round by the small river Caia, and there each regiment made
its first brief halt for a few minutes before pushing on to Azumar,
some fourteen miles from Portalegre, where the division was to pass
the night.

Those halts on the line of march were so brief that the bugles of the
leading corps always sounded the advance when those of the rear were
sounding the halt--ten minutes being the utmost time allotted.

On reaching Azumar, the lieutenant-general with his staff, and the
colonels of corps, found quarters in the castle of the counts of that
name, while the rest of the troops remained without the walls of the
town.

The night was fine for the season, and clear and starry; a pinkish
flush, that lingered beyond the summits of the Sierra Alpedriera to
the westward, showed where the November sun had set.  Tents were
pitched for the whole force; but, before turning in for the night,
Captain Askerne, Monkton, and other Borderers, preferred to sup in a
cosy nook, sheltered by a ruined vineyard wall and a group of
gigantic chestnuts, under which their servants had lighted a rousing
fire of dry branches and wood, hewn down by the pioneers' hatchets.

Each added the contents of his havresack to the common stock of the
party, and in the same fraternal fashion they shared the contents of
their canteens, flasks, and bottles; thus various kinds of liquor,
wine--brandy, and aguardiente, were contributed.  What the repast
lacked in splendour or delicacy was amply made up for by good humour
and jollity, and to those who had an eye for the picturesque, that
element was not wanting.

In the foreground the red glaring fire cast its light on the
soldierly fellows we have introduced to the reader, as they sat or
lounged on the grass in their regimental greatcoats, or cloaks of
blue lined with scarlet, and their swords and belts beside them.  The
great chestnut trees were well-nigh leafless now, and with the rough
masonry of the old wall, coated with heavily-leaved vine and ivy,
formed a background.

Further off, in another direction, were the glares of other
watchfires, around which similar groups were gathered--fires that
shed their light in fitful flashes on the long rows of white
bell-tents, on the dark figures that flitted to and fro, and on the
forms of the distant and solitary sentinels, who stood steadily on
their posts, the point of each man's bayonet shining like a red star
as the flame tipped it with fire.

"Here comes Colville," said Monkton, as that individual, who was
somewhat of a dandy and man of fashion, lounged slowly up, and cast
himself languidly on the grass.  "You have just been with the
colonel, I suppose?"

"Yes--a deuced bore--to report the baggage all up with the battalion,
the guard dismissed to their tents, and luckily, no casualties, save
a mule that we lost in a bog."

"And you found him bland, as usual?"

"I found him quartered, not in the castle, as I expected, but in a
deserted house half ruined by the French," replied Colville, smiling;
"the only habitable apartment was the kitchen, where our colours are
lodged, and there he was eating a tough bullock steak, embers and
all, just as his man had cooked it, on the ramrod of an old pistol.
Egad, it was a picture!"

"A dainty kabob we should have called it in Egypt," said Major
Middleton, laughing, with a huge magnum-bonum bottle of
brandy-and-water placed between his fat legs.  "Ah, the Honourable
Cosmo should not have quitted his guardsman's comforts at the York
Coffee-house, or Betty Neale's fruit-shop in St. Jameses Street,* to
rough it with the line in the Peninsula!"


* Two favourite resorts of the Household Brigade in those days.


"Did he compliment you on bringing up your disorderly charge without
other loss than the mule?" asked Askerne.

"The devil a bit," yawned Colville; "with his glass stuck in his eye,
he gave me one of his cool stares, and said, briefly, 'That will do,
sir--to your company.'"

"Ah," grumbled Middleton, shaking his old head, while his pigtail
swayed to and fro, "the colonel may have in his veins good blood, as
it is called, but he has in his heart about as much of the milk of
human kindness as if it belonged to an old lawyer."

The last part of the sentence, we are bound to add, was partly
mumbled into the mouth of the magnum, which at that moment the major
applied to his own.

"Here comes Dick Warriston," said Monkton, as an officer muffled in a
cloak approached.  "Hallo, Dick--how goes it, man?"

"Good evening, gentlemen--thought I should find you out.  I heard on
the march that our friend the volunteer had turned up again.  How are
you, Kennedy? glad to see you safe and sound once more," said
Quentin's old friend, as they shook hands, and he cast his ample blue
muffling aside, displaying his well-built figure, with the scarlet
coat, green lapels, and massive gold epaulettes of the Scots Brigade.

"Be seated, Dick."

"Thanks, Askerne."

"Do you prefer a chair, or a sofa?" asked Monkton.

"The sofa, by all means," replied Warriston, stretching himself on
the grass.

"There is brandy in that jar beside you, and Lisbon wine in the
bottle.  Here, under these fine old chestnuts, we are quite a select
little pic-nic party, out of range of shot, shell, and everything----"

"Except fireflies and mosquitoes, Willie--a poor substitute for the
girls, God bless them."

"Whose trumpets are these? what's up now?" asked Monkton, as a sharp
cavalry call rang upon the night.

"The 3rd Dragoons of the German Legion, Burgwesel's regiment, are
watering their horses."

"Those Germans are regular trumps in their order and discipline,"
said Monkton; "but as for the Portuguese, damme, they are not worth
their liquor.  Even the Johnny Crapauds despise them.  You have just
come in time, Warriston, to hear Kennedy relate to us his interview
with the guerilla chief; go on, lad, we are all listening," he added,
as he and others proceeded to light their cigars or charge their
pipes for a thorough bout of smoking.

Quentin told them briefly as much of his adventures as he deemed it
necessary to relate or reveal, from the time of his parting from
Askerne to the hour of his return to Portalegre.  The slaughter of
the French prisoners at Herreruela drew forth loud execrations and
unanimous condemnation.  His illness at the Villa de Maciera was
alone a mystery which he could not explain, and the manner in which
he consequently and naturally blundered in narrating this part of his
story, drew forth the laughter and the empty jests of the younger
portion of his audience.

"Damme," said Monkton, "you were a bold fellow, Kennedy, to become
spooney on the sister of such a melo-dramatic individual--such a
regular 'heavy villain' as this guerilla De Saldos!  Egad, the sight
of the fellow, with those black moustachios you have described, each
like a snake twisted under his hooked nose, would be enough to
frighten the French!"

"Very singular style of person, your Spanish friend, I should think,"
lisped Colville, with his glass in his eye.

"Remarkably so," added Ensign Pimple, raising his white eyebrows;
"decidedly a dangerous fellow to have a shindy with!"

"A most interesting individual, no doubt," said Buckle the adjutant;
"but begad, not at all suited to a quiet rubber or a little supper
party; takes mustard to his lamb, perhaps, and pepper to his
enchanted eggs, but knows nothing, I'll be bound, of a devilled
kidney, a broiled bone, and a tumbler of decent whisky toddy.  'Full
of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard;' he is all spasms, big
boots, and blue fire--eh?"

While they jested thus, and Quentin, with something of annoyance and
vexation, looked from one to another, Askerne and Warriston, who were
men of graver mood, had been eyeing him attentively.

"My poor lad,"' said the former, laying a hand kindly on his
shoulder, "all this that you have related was a sad trial for you--a
great test of courage and discretion for one so young to be subjected
to, especially in a foreign country, and among a people so fierce and
lawless."

"Your pistols were always my friends," said Quentin, laughing; "I
thought of them in every extremity, Captain Askerne; but fortunately
never had to use them."

"Then keep them, Quentin, my boy, as a little present from me," said
the grenadier.

"But to deprive you----"

"Matters nothing--I took a handsome pair of silver-mounted pops from
the holsters of a French officer the other day."

"Askerne has but anticipated me," said Warriston; "I had resolved to
give you mine, though they were a gift to me from my father's old
friend the Conservator of Scottish Privileges at Campvere, when the
Scots Brigade came home and turned their backs upon honest old
Holland for ever."

"Well, Kennedy," said Monkton, with a droll twinkle in his eye,
"we've heard all your adventures, at least _so much_ as you wisely,
prudently, and discreetly choose to tell us; but I cannot help
thinking that we could make a few interesting notes on the time spent
in that ruined Château en Espagne.  Was the donna young, black-eyed,
beautiful, and all that sort of thing, eh?"

"By Jove," added Colville, in the same tone, "you are a regular St.
Francis, or St. Anthony!  But unlike you, if the donnas on the other
side of the frontier think me worth their while, I am ready to be
subjected to any amount of seduction the dear creatures may choose to
put in practice."

Affecting neither to hear Monkton's banter nor Colville's addition,
Quentin turned to Askerne, admiring the order that glittered on his
left breast.

"This is Portuguese?" said he.

"Yes, Quentin--the Tower and Sword--given to me by the Junta of
Oporto for capturing an exploring party, consisting of an officer and
ten French dragoons of Ribeaupierre's regiment, whom I cut off in a
narrow valley near Portalegre (on the very day after you left us),
where I had been sent with twenty of ours to bring in forage."

"Askerne, I do envy you this decoration!" said Quentin, whose eyes
sparkled with genuine pleasure and admiration, for medals were almost
unknown in the British army then, and the Bath, as now, was only
given to field officers; "and they were, you say, dragoons of
Ribeaupierre?"

"The same corps with some of whom you fell in among the Spanish
mountains.  They are quartered in Valencia de Alcantara."

"Ribeaupierre!" said the bantering Monkton; "there is a name for an
intelligent young man to go to bed with!  It smacks of Anne
Radcliffe's mysterious romances of 'Sicily' and 'The Forest.'"

"Yet it is the name of an officer as brave as any in France," said
Quentin; "the general who bears it was a subaltern with Napoleon in
the Regiment of La Fere, a town on an island of the Oise, where it
was originally raised."

"Like that corps, the 24th Chasseurs à Cheval were originally under
the monarchy," said Warriston.

"Their uniform is light green, faced and lapelled with white?"

"Exactly, Quentin--the same uniform worn by the Emperor on almost
every occasion," replied Warriston; "the 24th were long known as the
Disinterested Regiment of Chartres."

"An honourable title," said Askerne; "how came they to win it, thou
man of anecdote?"

"About nineteen years ago, when the troubles of the Revolution were
first beginning, the regiment was quartered at Le Mans, a town of
France situated on the river Sarthe, if you have not forgotten your
geography, Rowland.  The corps then belonged--such was the French
aristocratic term--to Louis Philip Joseph, Duke of Orleans,* the
notorious 'Egalité' who was guillotined by the mob in 1793; but it
was denominated 'of Chartres,' from the county of the name gifted to
his ancestor by Louis XIV.


* Father of Louis Philippe I., late King of the French.


"The outrages of the Revolutionists were at their height around the
whole of Mans.  Day and night the dragoons of Chartres remained with
their accoutrements on and their horses saddled ready to assist the
magistrates and all peaceable citizens.  Every day brought tidings of
new horrors in the rural districts, and every night saw the sky
reddened by the flames of burning chateaux, convents, and
abbey-churches, whose occupants were given to pillage and death.

"So resolute and orderly were the dragoons of Chartres, so sturdily
and bravely did they protect the weak against the strong, enforce the
public peace, and conduct the transit of corn for the poor, that the
magistrates deemed it necessary to make some acknowledgment of their
services.  A vote of thanks from the municipality preceded a gratuity
of eight hundred livres (no great sum among us certainly, but a
handsome one on the other side of the Channel) to be distributed
among the three hundred Chasseurs of the corps.

"In a large bag the money, made, by the way, from the church bells of
France, was sent to the colonel, who gave it to the men to dispose of
as they pleased; upon which, instead of dividing it among themselves,
they resolved unanimously to bestow it upon a portion of the very
people who had been tormenting their lives for the last six months.

"One of the dragoons, a mere youth named Raoul, waited upon the
Rector of St. Nicholas in the city of Le Mans and handing him the bag
with its contents, said--

"'Monsieur le Recteur, we want not this money.  The pay of His
Majesty, whom God and St. Louis long preserve! secures us in all that
a soldier requires; but the poor, though they are the children of
God, are not so blessed.  We, the dragoons of Chartres, beg,
therefore, that you will accept of this for their use, and put it to
the common stock for the aged and the indigent.'"

"And this soldier was named Raoul?" said Quentin, who felt something
like a shock when he heard him mentioned.

"So the newspapers said," replied Warriston.

Quentin was silent, but the face of one of the dead dragoons whom he
had seen at Herreruela--he who had been dragged by his stirrup--came
vividly to memory; while, such is the effect of fancy, the moidores
that remained in his pocket seemed to become heavy as lead.

The hour was late now, and he was completely overcome by fatigue.
With a knapsack for a pillow he dropped asleep, while his more hardy
comrades sat smoking and drinking, and discussing the fortune of the
coming struggle in Spain.

As the light of the watch-fire waned and fell in flickering gleams on
his features, they seemed pinched, pale, and wan.

"God help the poor fatherless boy," said Captain Warriston, with
considerable emotion; "what hard fate brings him here?  He seems
quite a waif among us, and one that is hardly used by you fellows of
the 25th in particular.  I wish I had him with me in the Scots
Brigade.  This last devilish piece of duty has broken him completely
down!"

"No, no, Warriston; there is good stuff in him yet," said Rowland
Askerne, as he divested his broad shoulders of his own ample cloak,
and kindly spread it over the sleeper.  "At his age, I had neither
father nor mother nor friend to do _this_ for me, and I too was, like
him, a poor volunteer!"



CHAPTER VI.

THE ADVANCE INTO SPAIN.

  "Oh, life has many a varied tint,
    Has many a bright and lovely hue,
  Though care upon the brow may print
    A sadder, darker colour too.
  But hope still casts her rainbow wings
    O'er many a scene of care and strife,
  And gilds the hours round which she flings
    The bright and varied tints of life."
                                    CARPENTER.


Sir John Horn's division continued to march by the strong old
frontier town of Elvas, which crowns a rocky hill not far from where
the Guadiana sweeps south towards the sea.

"To-morrow," said Monkton, as he placed the glaring red cockade of
Ferdinand VII. on his shako, "we shall be airing our most dulcet
Spanish in Old Castile, learning to dance the bolero, to tilt up our
legs in the fandango, and to twangle on the guitar."

"I fear, Dick, that Marshal Soult will cut out more serious work for
us," said Major Middleton.

"Do we halt at Elvas?" asked some one, as the regiment approached the
town.

"Yes, thank Heaven!" exclaimed Monkton.

"We have marched twenty miles to-day, and to-night I am going to the
camp of the 28th."

"On duty?"

"No; but because they have fallen in with a cask of whisky."

"Whisky!" exclaimed several voices.  "Whisky here?"

"The best Farintosh.  It was taken from the wreck of a Scotch
transport in Maciera Bay, and, may I never see morning, if I don't
beg, borrow, or steal at least a canteenful.  The Slashers won't
refuse me, I am sure."

Next morning, a march of ten miles brought them in sight of the great
castle of Badajoz--that place of terrible but immortal memory!

Flanked by the waters of the Rivollas and Guadiana, flowing between
vineyards and olive groves, it towered in clear sharp outline against
the pure blue sky, on cliffs three hundred feet in height, with all
its grim batteries and tiers of cannon bristling, row on row; its
eight great bastions, each standing forth with one angle bathed in
strong yellow sunlight, and the other sunk in deep purple shadow; the
rich gothic spires and countless pinnacles of its churches and
convents, and the glittering casements of its white-walled mansions
that clustered on its rocky steep, all shining in the warm glow,
while, in the background, extended far away the long green wavy
outline of the mountains of Toledo.

Kellerman and Victor had alike been foiled before it, as the
Portuguese had been in the days of the Archduke John of Austria, and
now the scarlet and yellow banners of King Ferdinand VII. were still
waving triumphantly upon the towers of San Cristoval, San Roque, and
the Forts of Picurina and Pardaleras.  The united clangour of,
perhaps, five hundred bells, mellowed by the distance, came merrily
upon the morning breeze, a welcome to the British.  Then a white puff
of smoke from the highest battery of the grand old citadel announced
the first gun of a royal salute.  Another and another followed,
flashing from the dark embrasures, while the pale wreaths curled
upward and floated away, till the whole round of twenty-one pieces
was complete; but, as the city was two miles distant, each report
came faintly to the ear, and at an interval after the flash.

Ere long, the twenty-eight arches of the noble bridge of the Guadiana
rang beneath the hoofs of our Light Dragoons, as the advanced guard
began to cross, and, amid the clangour of bells in spire and
campanile, and the "vivas" of the assembled thousands, the reiterated
shouts of "Viva los Ingleses!" "Viva los Escotos!" the infantry found
themselves defiling through the lower streets of Badajoz and entering
Spain.

Eyes dark and bright sparkled with pleasure and welcome from many an
open lattice, and many a fan and veil were waved, and many a white
hand kissed to the passing troops, as, with colours waving and
bayonets fixed, they passed under the gaily crowded balconies on
their way to the Guadiana.

Escorted by a guard of glittering Spanish lancers, mounted on
beautiful jennets, a quaint old coach, such as we only see depicted
in fairy tales or pantomimes, came slowly rumbling forward on its
carved and gilded wheels.  It was gorgeous with burnished brasses and
coats armorial, but was shaped like a gigantic apple pie, drawn by
six sleek fat mules, that were almost hidden under their elaborate
trappings; and each pair had a little lean dark postilion, in
cocked-hat and epaulettes, floundering away in boots like
water-buckets, while, at the doors on both sides, hung two tripod
stools, as the means of ingress and egress.

But, in front of this remarkable conveyance, the advanced guard
halted with carbine on thigh, the officers saluting and the trumpets
sounding, while the general and staff approached bare-headed, with
hat in hand, for in the recesses of this apple-pie were the most
Reverend Padres en Dios, the Archbishop of Santiago, the Bishop
Suffragan of Compostella, Senores the Captain-general, the Alcalde of
Badajoz, and a great many more, in civic robes and military uniforms,
with crosses and medals, and all of these persons clambered out of
the interior, and descended on terra firma by means of the
three-legged stools aforesaid, coach-steps being as yet unknown in
the realms of his Most Catholic majesty.

"Well," said Monkton, "this turn-out beats all the buggies I ever
saw.  By Jove! it is like Noah's ark on wheels.  Such a team it would
be to 'tool' to Epsom with!"

We shall skip the long and solemn, the flattering and bombastic
speeches made by the Spanish officials, and the curt but manly
responses given by the British on this auspicious occasion.  Suffice
it to say that, after a brief halt, the division continued its route
by easy marches.  The green hill of Albuera--the scene of a glorious
battle three years after--ere long became visible on the right flank;
but the day passed without any tidings being heard of the guerillas
of Don Baltasar de Saldos, a circumstance which, in the course of
conversation with Buckle the adjutant, the Master of Rohallion
contrived that Quentin should know.  Naturally he felt anxious about
the matter, and feared in his heart that perhaps he had personally
something to do with the non-appearance of this famous partisan chief.

Twenty-four miles beyond Badajoz brought the division, with all the
heavy artillery of the army, to Montijo, a little town of
Estremadura, where a camp was formed for the night near the Guadiana.

As contrasted with "the Granary of Portugal," through which they had
latterly passed, the barrenness of wasted and long-neglected
Estremadura impressed all with poor ideas of Spain.

"The great Conde was right," said Warriston, as the little group of
the other evening assembled again, in nearly a similar manner, to sup
by their watchfire, which was lighted near a deserted pottery in a
field where the Indian corn had grown and been reaped; "right indeed,
when he said if you wish to know what actual want is, carry on a war
in Spain!"

"And the comforts of a Peninsular tour like ours are in no way
enhanced when one's exchequer is low," said Monkton.

"True, Willie, and there is a wonderful sympathy between the animal
spirits and the breeches-pocket."

"And I, for one, can show 'a regular soldier's thigh,' my purse has
long since collapsed."

"Line it with these, Monkton," said Quentin, slipping a half-dozen
moidores into his hand.

"What are these?--moidores, by the gods of the Greeks!  But thanks,
my friend, I shall pay you at San Pedro, where I shall bring our
paymaster to book.  I could lavish a colonel's pay, if I had it,
which is never likely to be the case, for we're a devilish slow
regiment, Quentin."

"But some of our Highland corps are slower still," remarked an
officer.

"I have known a fellow to be four years an ensign in one of them, and
every month at least once under fire all the time," said Askerne.

"They never sell out or purchase in, and then there is no killing
them by bullets, starvation, or fatigue."

"For the baggage guard to-morrow, Mr. Monkton," said old
Sergeant-major Calder, approaching the group, who were lounging on
the grass; "for the colours, Mr. Hardinge and Mr. Boyle."

He saluted and retired, while Monkton apostrophized the baggage guard
in pretty round terms.

"I should like to have halted one night at Badajoz," said Colville;
"there is a theatre there, and other means of spending money which
smack of civilization.  Conyers----"

"Who's he?"

"Conyers of the 10th Hussars, one of Hope's extra aides-de-camp, says
there are some beautiful girls to be seen on the promenade of
poplars, the Prado beside the river, in the evening, where they all
go veiled, with fireflies strung in their hair, producing a very
singular effect."

"I would rather be whispering soft nothings into their pretty ears
and over their white shoulders than be bivouacking here," said
Monkton.

"I believe you, my friend; but perhaps the knife of some devil of a
lover or _cortejo_ might give your whisperings a point you never
expected," replied Askerne.

"Try a sip from my canteen," said Monkton; "it contains some of the
stuff I got the other night at the camp of the 28th, and better
you'll find it than the aguardiente of the Spanish Hottentots.  Take
a pull, Quentin, as a nightcap, and then turn in under that laurel
bush and sleep if you can, under your own bays, till the bugle sounds
the 'rouse.'"

Remembering the injunctions of the worthy Padre Florez, Quentin
declined.

"Well, well, boy, as you please," said Monkton, slinging his canteen
behind him; "but what the devil's that?  Cavalry!"

"It is the staff--the general," exclaimed Askerne, as they all
started to their feet, and proceeded to buckle on their swords, as
Sir John Hope, with several mounted staff officers and commanders of
corps, among whom was Colonel Cosmo Crawford, approached slowly,
checking their horses, and talking with considerable animation, while
their flowing scarlet and white plumes, their cocked-hats,
aiguilettes, and orders, the holsters, and housings of their horses,
were all visible in the glare of the watchfire, on which the servants
and pioneers were heaping fresh branches for the night, and the
occasional flashes of which brought out in strong light or threw into
deep shadow the martial group, imparting a Rembrandtish tone to the
horses and their riders.

"What is this you say, Conyers?" Sir John was heard to ask; "repeat
it to Colonel Crawford of the 25th.  You bring us----"

"Most serious intelligence, sir," replied Conyers, who wore the blue
and scarlet of the 10th Hussars, and who seemed flushed and excited
by a long ride.  "I have just come on the spur from Badajoz, and
there tidings have reached the Captain-general that yesterday the
Spaniards, under Don Joachim Blake, were again completely discomfited
at Espinosa, and that the Estremaduran army, which was beaten the day
before at Gamonal, is demoralized or cut to pieces; and that the
first, second, and fourth corps of the French army, seventy thousand
strong, are free to act in any quarter."

"First, second, and fourth--these are the corps of Victor, Bessières,
and Lefebre."

"Exactly, Sir John."

"If they march against us, the whole siege and field artillery of the
army may be lost!" exclaimed Hope.

"Nor is this all, sir," continued the aide-de-camp, speaking rapidly
and with growing excitement; "the movement made by the guerillas of
Baltasar de Saldos towards the hill of Albuera, to cover our advance,
has been anticipated!"

"_Anticipated!_"

"Yes, Sir John."

"How, how?" asked several voices.

"General de Ribeaupierre with his whole brigade, consisting of the
24th Chasseurs à Cheval, the Westphalian Light Horse, numbering five
hundred and sixty sabres, and the Dragoons of Napoleon, five hundred
strong, aided by Laborde's corps and some field guns, issued from
Valencia de Alcantara, attacked the guerillas in a valley near San
Vincente, and captured their five pieces of artillery, killing the
Conde de Maciera, a captain of Lancers, who made three charges to
retake them; so De Saldos informs the Captain-general at Badajoz,
that there must be treachery somewhere."

"Treachery," reiterated the general, while Cosmo Crawford put his
glass to his eye and glanced with a malicious smile towards the group
where Quentin, with others, stood listening to all this with the
deepest interest, for until the "Courier," or some English paper
reached them, they were often ignorant for months of what was enacted
in other parts of Spain.

"Don Baltasar is on the march, however, to join us," resumed Captain
Conyers; "he has made a detour by the left bank of the Valverde, and
by to-morrow evening hopes to make his report to you in person."

"I thank you, Captain Conyers," said the general; "come, gentlemen,
this is not so bad after all!  To-morrow night we halt at Merida."

"Had you not better despatch a message to De Saldos, saying so,"
suggested an officer.

"My horse is used up, sir," said Captain Conyers, smiling; "he has
gone forty-five miles, on a feed of chopped whin, over the most
infernal roads too!"

"There is that young volunteer of ours," said Cosmo; "he acquitted
himself so well before, Sir John----"

"That we should give him an opportunity of doing so again,"
interrupted the lieutenant-general.

"A good idea!" muttered some of the staff.

"Mr. Kennedy," said Cosmo, beckoning forward the anxious listener; "a
message saying where we shall halt to-morrow is to be despatched to
the guerilla De Saldos; you will, of course, only be too happy to
bear it?"

"I beg most respectfully to decline, sir," said Quentin,
emphatically, and with growing anger.

"What the devil, sirrah?" Cosmo was beginning.

"Ha--indeed, and wherefore?" asked the general.

"I am scarcely able to keep up with the regiment, General Hope,"
replied Quentin; "I have been seriously ill, and am more fit for
hospital than for duty."

The general knit his brows, and Cosmo dealt Quentin, through his
eyeglass, a glance of cool scrutiny, that deepened into withering
scorn or hate without alloy.

"Very well, we must send an orderly dragoon," said Sir John Hope,
turning away.

"Take care, Mr. Kennedy," said Cosmo, "lest at a future time this
refusal may be remembered against you to your disadvantage."

"Crawford doesn't like you, Quentin," said Askerne, after the staff
rode away; "it is a great pity, for, though cold and haughty, he is a
brave and good officer."

"Damme, don't scoff at the service, Askerne," said Monkton, with mock
severity.

Poor Quentin had a heavy heart that night; we are not sure that he
did not shed some bitter and unavailing tears, for the forebodings of
coming evil banished sleep when he most needed it, and crushed the
soul within him.

But his comrades as usual sat long by the watch-fire, passing the
night with song, jest, and anecdote.  They had neither care for the
present nor fear for the future, and their jollity formed a strong
contrast to his forlorn sadness.

"I think we should now turn in," said Monkton; "we march betimes
to-morrow; to your tents, O Borderers!  But what the deuce is that?"

"The _générale_," said Colville.

"Already!"

"Already, Monkton; and there sounds the gathering of the Gordons in
the streets of Montijo."

"The nights are very short in the Penin-in-insula," said Monkton,
scrambling up and making several attempts to buckle his belt.

"You'll have to sober yourself on the march, Willie," said Askerne,
giving him a rough shake.

"By Jove! to have to fall in when one should go to sleep--to nod and
drowse and dream while tramping on and on, your nose coming every
minute down on the tin canteen or the knapsack of the man in front of
you!  It is miserable work; but what with contract powder that won't
explode, ammunition shoes warranted not to last, diseased bullocks
shot while at fever heat and eaten half raw, we are little likely to
beat the French, either in fighting or marching."

"Unless, like them, we learn to hang an occasional commissary or
contractor," said old Middleton, as he sprang with agility on his
horse; and the regiment formed open column of companies in the dark,
for daybreak was yet an hour distant.



CHAPTER VII.

RETROGRESSION.

  "Lucius, the horsemen are returned from viewing
  The number, strength, and posture of our foes,
  Who now encamp within a short hour's march.
  On the high point of yonder western tower,
  We ken them from afar, the setting sun
  Plays on their shining arms and burnished helmets,
  And covers all the field with gleams of fire."
                                          _Cato_, Act v.


Ere noon next day, while the division was traversing the grassy plain
amid which lies the ancient city of Merida, the sound of distant
firing on their right flank announced the repulse, by the guerillas,
of some of the cavalry of Laborde's corps, when making a
reconnoissance.  The light white puffs of the musketry that curled
along the green hill-sides, came nearer and nearer, and it soon
became known that the band of the formidable De Saldos el Estudiente,
above two thousand strong, had joined the division of Sir John Hope;
as the newspaper of Lord Rohallion had it, a measure fully arranged
"by the skill and courage" of our young volunteer.  But though the
army continued its march for several days, no recognition of his
service, in orders or otherwise, ever reached him from head-quarters,
and happily for himself, he saw nothing of the dreaded Baltasar, who
fortunately was left in the rear, with an open sabre cut.

Ribeaupierre's cavalry brigade abandoned Valencia de Alcantara
without firing a shot, on its flank being turned, and fell back, no
one knew exactly where or in what direction.

Hope's division halted at Merida, a place eminently calculated to
excite the deepest interest in the thinking or historical visitor, by
its ancient remains; its great bridge of more than eighty arches
spanning the broad waters of the Guadiana; the ruins of its Roman
castle, which Alfonso the Astrologer gifted to the knights of
Santiago, and in the vaults of which Baltasar's guerillas had thrust
some unfortunate French prisoners; its triumphal arch of Julius
Cæsar, under which the division passed with drums beating and colours
flying, and its crumbling amphitheatre:--Merida, of old the Rome of
Spain, and the home of the aged and disabled soldiers of the 5th and
10th legions of Augustus Cæsar, whose great pyramid still towers
there, amid the ruins of its contemporaries.

There was ample accommodation in the town for the officers of the
division; but yet not enough to prevent a dispute about rank, or
precedence, or something else, between a Captain Winton of the
Borderers, and an officer of the German Legion.  So they met about
daybreak near the Baths of Diana.  The former was attended by Askerne
of the Grenadiers, and the latter by Major Burgwesel of his own
corps, and at the second fire Winton shot his man dead, Cosmo coolly
lending his pistols for this occasion, without comment or inquiry,
either of which would have been ungentlemanly, according to the
temper or spirit of the service then.

Prior to this event, on the evening the division halted, Quentin,
about the hour of sunset, had wandered to the old Roman aqueduct
which lies near the city, and he remained for a time lost in thought
while surveying its mouldering arches, and the piles of columns,
bases, flowered capitals, enriched friezes, Corinthian entablatures,
and broken statues, lying amid the weeds and long grass, the remains
of the once superb temples, ruined by the Goths and Moors; and
perhaps he was thinking of his old dominie at Rohallion, and the
worthy pedant's profound veneration for the ancient days of Rome, the
mistress of all the then known world.

The place was solitary and almost buried amid old vineyards and
groves of now leafless trees.  Under one of the mouldering arches,
from which, notwithstanding the lateness of the season, masses of
luxuriant creepers and trailers were yet hanging, Quentin, leaning on
his musket, lingered to admire the scenery and the glory of the
golden sunset, which spread its farewell radiance over the vast
plain, of which Merida, from its situation on a lofty eminence,
commands a view in every direction--the olive groves yet green and
waving in the breeze, and the winding Guadiana, while far away in
distance, all tinted in dusky blue or russet brown, but edged with
flaming gold, stretched the mountain sierras, range over range,
towards the north.

From the pleasant contemplation of this evening landscape he was
suddenly roused by seeing a pair of fierce dark eyes glaring into his
own.

It was the guerilla Trevino, of whom it seems a mockery to give his
once prefix of Padre!

"So, senor," said he, with a terrible grimace, "we meet again, do we?"

"It seems so, senor," replied Quentin, haughtily, as he stepped back
a pace, "and what then?"

"Only that I find you in very bad company."

"I am alone, senor."

"Well, and you alone form the company I refer to," replied the
Spaniard, insolently, and with a savage grin, while the fingers of
his right hand clutched the haft of his knife, and his thumb was
firmly planted on the pommel.  There was no mistaking this action or
his air for anything else than open hostility, so Quentin warily
stepped back another pace, and glanced hastily round to be assured
that no other guerillas were lurking near, and then grasping the
barrel of his musket, which was unloaded, he stood ready on his
defence against an antagonist who possessed, perhaps, twice his
bodily strength.

"What do you mean, Senor Trevino, by accosting me in this manner?" he
demanded.

"I mean, _hombre_, that I have been lately at the Convent of Sant
Engracia, and that Donna Isidora has _not_ been heard of there; so,
in the meantime, I and two or three others have sworn across our
knives to kill you, that is all; leaving to time to reveal what you
have done with her."

Something of this kind was what Quentin had long dreaded; but
disdaining any attempt to explain or expostulate, and exasperated by
the injustice to which he was subjected, he clutched his musket and
said sternly--

"Stand back, fellow!"

"Ha! _perro y ladron_ (dog and thief)--you will have it, then!"

With head stooped, body crouching, and knife drawn, the Spaniard was
springing like a tiger upon Quentin, when the brass butt of Brown
Bess, swung by no sparing or erring hand, fell full on his left
temple, from whence it slid very unpleasantly down on his
collar-bone, and tumbled him bleeding and senseless on the ground.

After this, Quentin, who was in no mood to feel any compunction about
the affair, turned and left him to recover as he might, resolving,
until in a more secure neighbourhood, not to indulge his taste for
the picturesque or antique, and feeling exceeding thankful that he
had not left his musket as usual in his tent.

"You were just in time, sir," said a voice, as Quentin turned to
leave the ruined aqueduct; "an instant later and that Spanish thief
had put his knife into you."

The speaker was Allan Grange, of the 25th, who, stooping down, took
from Trevino's relaxed hand his knife, a very ugly pig-butcher-like
weapon.  A guerilla, doubtless some friend of Trevino's, was
hastening forward at this moment, but on seeing Quentin joined by a
comrade he drew back a little way, and so the affair ended for the
time; but this was not the last that Quentin was fated to hear of the
encounter.

By the ruinous town of Medellin (the birthplace of the conqueror of
Mexico), where the Guadiana was fabled of old to rise, after running
twenty miles under ground; by the wretched town of Miajadas, and by
Truxillo, with its feudal towers and Moorish walls, when the French
had ruined alike the house in which Pizarro was born and the noble
palace of the Conde de Lopesa, the division continued its march amid
rough and stormy weather, and, after passing Talavera de la Reyna--so
called from the queen of Alonzo XI., to distinguish it from other
places of the same name--halted, on the 22nd day of November, at the
Escurial, that magnificent palace, twenty-five miles from Madrid,
built by Philip II. in commemoration of the battle of St. Quentin, a
holy personage, to whom he solemnly dedicated it.

With his regiment, our hero bivouacked outside the little village of
Escurial de Abajo.  The night was a fearful one of storm.  Over the
bare and desolate country the winter wind swept in tempestuous gusts
and the rain fell in torrents, swelling all the streams of the
Guadarama--for the weather was completely broken now.

In that horrible bivouac poor Quentin lost his blanket--his whole
household furniture.  Near him lay a soldier's wife with a sick
infant; he spread it over both and left it with them; when the
regiment shifted its ground next day the mother and child dropped by
the wayside, so Quentin never saw them or his blanket again.

Here, as Sir John Moore had foreseen, and as General Hope had stated
his fears to Cosmo, the enemy did _press forward_ from Valladolid and
Tordesillas, and the advanced posts of their cavalry being reported
in sight, strong guards were posted and picquets thrown forward in
front of the Escurial.

This forward movement of the French threatened to cut off Hope's
communication with Sir John Moore, who was then at Salamanca, and
might lose his artillery.

To prevent this, and effect a junction with the main body under the
general, Hope marched from the Escurial on the 27th of November, and
crossed the long and lofty mountain chain of the Guadarama, the
cliffs of which are so steep that the Spaniards of old likened them
to straight spindles.  Moving by Villa Castin, a market-town at their
base, he halted at Avila, on the right bank of the Ajada, where
Quentin was billeted in the same house with Monkton, in that dark and
narrow street in which the spiritual Maria Theresa was
born--"_Nuestra Serifica Madre_," as she is named by the old
Castilians.

The enemy's light cavalry were still pressing on, and at times their
carbines were heard popping in the distance, when responding to our
skirmishers.  It was the gloomy morning of the first day of December;
the rain was still falling in torrents, and the sky looked dark and
louring.

Save an occasional exchange of shots between outposts and petty
skirmishes, nothing of interest had taken place with the enemy, and
the toil of this retrograde movement dispirited the troops.  Even
Monkton, one of the most heedless men in the regiment, was sullen and
spiritless.  Wearied by their long march, he and Quentin sat in their
bare and miserable billet, silent and moody.  It was in the house of
a hatter, or maker of sombreros, facing the dark and narrow street,
which was overshadowed by a gigantic parish church, the bells of
which were ringing in honour of the British, and their notes came
mournfully on the passing gusts of wind.

It was indeed a wild evening in Avila.  The rain was pouring down in
one uniform and ceaseless sheet, the wind bellowing in the
thoroughfares with a melancholy sound, and the swollen Ajada was
boiling in foam against the piers of its ancient bridge.

A miserable meal of tough beef, boiled with a little rice in a
pipkin, had been served up by Monkton's servant, a poor half-starved
fellow, whose single shirt had long since been reduced to its collar
and wristbands, whose red coat showed innumerable darns and patches,
and who now regretted the days when he forsook his plough on
Tweedside to become a soldier.  With their feet planted on a brasero
of charcoal, cloaks muffled about them for warmth, and cigars in
their mouths, our two warriors ruefully surveyed the bare whitewashed
walls of their room, and then looked at each other.

"Rain, rain!" exclaimed Monkton; "what an infernal climate!  And this
is the land of grapes and sunshine!  I've never seen such drops since
I was in the West Indies with our flank companies, at the capture of
Martinique."

At that moment, amid the lashing of the rain on wall and window, the
roar of the wind, and the rush of the gorged gutters, the tramp of a
horse was heard, and the voice of Buckle, who was brigade-adjutant
for the day, was heard shouting--

"Fall in, the outlying picquets of the 1st brigade--sound bugle!"

But his voice and the half-strangled bugle notes were alike borne
away by the tempest.

A heavy malediction escaped Monkton.  This worthy sub had puffed at
his fragrant Havannah till he had smoked himself into such a soothed
state that he was quite indisposed "to be bothered about anything or
anybody," as he said; and now he remembered that on halting the
sergeant-major had warned him for out-picquet.

He sprang up and kicked the brasero aside, sending the smouldering
charcoal flying right and left.

"Out-picquet!" he exclaimed, "and the rain coming down in bucketfuls!
Damme, who would be a soldier abroad, while there are chimneys to
sweep at home?"

A smart single knock now came to the door, as he belted his sword
beneath his cloak.

"Come in--is that you, sergeant-major?"

"Yes, sir," said old Norman Calder, who was muffled in his grey
great-coat, which, as he said, "smoked like a killogie."

"Where are these infernal picquets parading?"

"I've just come to show you, sir; they are falling in under the
arcades opposite the Bishop's palace, where the staff are quartered.
Fresh ammunition has just been served out to all."

"That looks like work."

"Yes, sir; the enemy's cavalry are in force upon the road towards
Villa Castin, in our rear."

"We have heard little else since we fell back from the Escurial."

As a volunteer is always the first man for any perilous duty, Quentin
buttoned his great-coat over his accoutrements and musket, and set
out to join Monkton's picquet, which Buckle was parading, with
several others, under some quaint old arcades of stone, above which
the houses, with broad balconies and rich entablatures, remnants of
the days when Avila was rich and flourishing, rose to a considerable
height.

The daylight was nearly gone now, and already the half-drenched and
half-fed soldiers looked pale and weary.

"As the weather has been frequently wet, and as the duty of to-night
is an important one, you will be careful, gentlemen, to inspect the
arms, flints, and ammunition of your picquets," said Buckle; "and as
the prickers may not be deemed sufficient to indicate the state of
the touch-holes, the butts will be brought to the front."

"Butts to the front," an order then in use, was given by Monkton and
each officer in succession, after which the ranks were opened, and
every man blew down the barrel of his musket, so that by applying a
hand to the touch-hole the real state of the vent was ascertained by
the inspector.

"Handle arms--with ball cartridge, prime, and load--secure arms!"
followed rapidly, and away went the out-picquets, double-quick,
through rain and mire, wind and storm, to their several posts,
Monkton's being a mile and a half beyond the bridge of the Ajada, in
tolerably open ground, interspersed with groups of little trees.

Under one of these he sheltered his picquet, and two hundred yards in
front of it posted his line of sentinels, with orders not to walk to
and fro, but to stand steadily on their posts, to look straight to
their front, to fire on all who could not give the countersign, and
to keep up a regular communication with each other and with those of
the picquets on both flanks; and then each man was left for his
solitary hour, the time allotted for such duty when in front of an
enemy.

About daybreak, after a short nap in the thicket, and after imbibing
a sip from his canteen of rum grog--the last of its contents--Quentin
found himself on this solitary but important duty, posted on the
centre of the highway, gazing steadily into the murky obscurity
before him, and thanking Heaven in his heart that the rain had
ceased, and that the cold and biting December wind was passing away.



CHAPTER VIII.

A MESSAGE FROM THE ENEMY.

  "'Tis true, unruffled and serene I've met
  The common accidents of life, but here
  Such an unlooked-for storm of ills falls on me
  It beats down all my strength--I cannot bear it."
                                          ADDISON.


This was not the first occasion on which Quentin had enacted the part
of sentinel; but never had he done so with the knowledge that the
enemy was before him, and perhaps at that moment closer than he had
any idea of, among the mist that obscured the landscape.

All was quiet in front and rear; save the drip of the last night's
rain from an over-charged leaf, or the croaking of the bull-frogs in
a marsh close by, not a sound broke the stillness.

The dull grey winter morning stole slowly in; the distant mountain
peaks of the Guadarama grew red, but all else remained opaque and
dim, save the jagged summits of that lofty _sierra_--a Spanish word
very descriptive of a range of conical hills, being evidently (as we
are informed by a letter of the dominie) derived from _serra_, the
Latin word for a saw.

On the slope of a hill, at a little distance from where Quentin
stood, was a gibbet, a strong post about twenty feet high, having two
horizontal beams crosswise on its summit, and from these four arms
there hung four robbers, each by the neck, and their long black hair
waved over their faces as they swung slowly to and fro in the morning
wind, with the ravens wheeling around them, and perching on the arms
of the gibbet.

The bull-frogs in the marsh croaked vigorously, and like every other
place in Spain, even this fetid swamp had its legend; for here it was
that the Cid, Rodrigo de Bivar, when proceeding at the head of twenty
young and brave hidalgoes, on a pilgrimage to the shrine of Saint
James at Compostella, saw an aged and half-naked leper in the midst
of the slough.  Leaping from his horse, Rodrigo dragged the poor man
forth, and to the wrath and disgust of his mail-shirted companions,
seated him on his own charger, Babieca; thereafter he set him at
table with them, and finally, in the extremity of his humility and
Christian charity, shared his bed with him.  In the night the
cavalier awoke, and beheld the leper standing on a cloud above his
bed, midway between the floor and ceiling, surrounded by a blaze of
light and clad in white and shining robes; and ere he vanished he
informed the Cid that he was Saint Lazarus, who had taken the form of
a leper to test his charity, which was so commendable that God had
granted he should prosper in all things, but chiefly in his wars
against the infidel dogs who were troubling all Spain.

As the mists drew upward, Quentin could see about half a mile distant
in front, a line of French cavalry videttes, each sitting motionless
in his saddle, and both horse and rider looking like one huge and
mis-shapen figure, as the scarlet cloak of the latter was spread over
the crupper of his charger behind him.

While gazing steadily and with deep interest at the enemy, he was
somewhat surprised to see two French dragoons suddenly ride from
their own lines straight along the road towards his post.

That they were deserters--his first idea--was impossible, as they
rode leisurely and were not fired on by their picquets.  By their
light green uniforms and brass helmets with flowing plumes he soon
saw that they were Chasseurs à Cheval, and that one, who rode a few
paces in front of the other, was an officer, with a white
handkerchief tied as an extempore flag of truce to the point of his
sabre.

Monkton, and the main body of the picquet, were rather beyond hail,
and for a minute Quentin was irresolute what to do; but before he
could decide upon anything, the officer came fairly up to him, and
checking his horse on the bit, said in tolerable English--

"Monsieur le soldat, we have come hither on an errand of mercy.  An
old and valued officer of our corps is sinking under the fatigue of
last night and the suffering incident to an old wound, so we have
ridden over to see if there is not at least one brave and generous
man among you, who will give us a mouthful of eau-de-vie or any other
spirit to keep him alive; for though our surgeons order this,
_sangdieu_, we haven't a drop in the whole brigade."

The interchange of many civilities, wine, biscuits, tobacco, and
newspapers, frequently took place between our outposts and the French
during the Peninsular wars.  To such a length was this eventually
carried, that they frequently went over to smoke at each other's
watchfires; but a very stringent order of the Duke of Wellington put
a stop to these visits.

Before the speaker had concluded his singular request, Quentin had
time to recognise in him the French lieutenant whom he had so
signally befriended at Herreruela.

"Monsieur de Ribeaupierre," said he, "don't you remember me?"

"_Parbleu!_ yes--this is fortunate, my friend," said the other,
grasping Quentin's hand; "I am glad to see you again, but not with
the musket still--what! no promotion yet?"

"I am still but a volunteer."

"Ah--you should serve the emperor!"

"And then, we have not yet fought a battle."

"Had you not fallen back so rapidly on our advance from Valladolid
and Tordesillas, we should have had the pleasure of capturing and
escorting you all to France."

"Thanks for your good intentions."

"I still hope to see them carried out," said Ribeaupierre, laughing;
"but here come some of your people," he added, waving his
handkerchief, as Monkton, who had witnessed this interview, came
hurrying forward, with his sergeant, and a section of the picquet
with bayonets fixed.

Quentin rapidly acquainted Monkton with the object of the Frenchman's
visit, adding--

"He is Ribeaupierre, the French officer of whom I told you--son of
the brigadier of the same name."

"Ah--indeed; then I have much pleasure in meeting him," said Monkton,
as he and the officer saluted each other very courteously.

On inquiry being made, it was discovered that the sergeant of the
picquet, Ewen Donaldson, alone had any brandy, so he readily poured
the contents of his canteen into the flask of Ribeaupierre, who,
after thanking him profusely, handed it to his orderly, saying--

"Paul, mon camarade, away with this for our patient; use your spurs,
and I shall follow."

The dragoon galloped away.  Ribeauperre offered a five-franc piece to
Donaldson, who being a gruff Scotsman, declined it so bluffly that
the young officer coloured to the peak of his helmet.

"You will join me in a cigar then, mon camarade?" said he, politely
proffering his open cigar case.  Then saluting Monkton again, he
said, "Excuse me, monsieur l'officier, if, before returning, I speak
a word or two in your presence with the friend to whom I owe my
life--whom my good mother remembers every night in her prayers, for I
told her of our adventures near Valencia."

"Your mother, monsieur?  Is it possible that she is with the army at
this season?"

"She is with the emperor's court at Madrid, and hopes to see you all
set sail from Lisbon.  By the way," added Ribeaupierre, with a smile
of waggery, "your lively Spanish friend, Donna Isidora, will be quite
consoled when I tell her that I have seen you--alive and well too!
She thinks of you with remorse and tears, as one whom she had
poisoned in mistake, she says.  How came all that to pass?  We sent a
patrol to search the Villa de Maciera for you, but no trace of you
could be found."

"Is she still in your hands?" asked Quentin, with an expression of
interest.

"Yes, monsieur," replied the other, caressing his moustache.

"A prisoner?"

"_Peste_!  What an idea!"

"I trust you--you have treated her well and kindly?"

"She shall answer for herself, some time hence."

"A prisoner!  Poor Isidora!  She will be quite inconsolable."

"Inconsolable?  Mom ami, you forget in whose charming society she is!
We fellows of the 24th Chasseurs are unrivalled in conversational
powers and the general art of pleasing.  She spoke of you very
often--thought you a very nice fellow--but so quiet--so _triste_!"

Quentin was glad that Monkton, whom he did not wish to hear all this,
had gradually gone beyond earshot.

"And she--she----" he was beginning with emotions of annoyance and
mortification.

"Be assured that she became quite consoled among the 24th, and now,
as Madame Jules de Marbœuf, (for my comrade Jules took her off my
hands), she has learned to think that we Frenchmen are not such bad
fellows, after all."

"This is indeed news!" exclaimed Quentin; "Isidora married--married,
and to a Frenchman!"

"Ah--la belle tigresse is quite tamed now; but _I_ must begone.
_Ouf--peste--tonnerre de Dieu!_ what a night we have had, monsieur,"
he added to Monkton, who again approached.  "I have been so soaked
that I felt as if the rain was filtering through the marrow of my
bones.  If you effect your junction with M. le Général Moore, I
suppose we shall have the little variety of a general action."

"It is extremely probable," replied Monkton, smiling at the French
officer's free and easy manner.

"That will indeed be gay--we are so anxious to measure swords with
your cavalry.  Do you know that General Foy, in one of his
despatches, attributes your accidental victories----"

"_Accidental?_"

"That is the word, my friends----"

"For Roleia and Vimiera--eh?"

"Yes, for anything you like--Trafalgar and the Nile, if you please."

"Well, and Foy attributes them----"

"To two great elements you Anglais possess."

"Powder and pluck?"

"No--rum and ros-bif--ha, ha!  _Au revoir_--we shall meet again," and
putting spurs to his horse, Ribeaupierre, keeping his white
handkerchief still displayed, rode across to his own lines, turning,
however, repeatedly to kiss his hand, as his horse caracoled along.

Relieved from his post, Quentin rejoined the main body of the picquet
in the grove of trees, where he remained apart from the men and full
of thought; for though his self-esteem was somewhat piqued on
learning that Isidora had so easily forgot him, he was greatly
pleased to hear of her safety, and hoped that the circumstance, when
known, would relieve him from the hostility of Baltasar and his
ragamuffins, of whom he not unnaturally had a constant dread.  These
ideas were mingled with something of amusement--that the
brother-in-law of Baltasar, the most ferocious of Spanish patriots,
should be a Frenchman!

Just as the picquets rejoined their regiments, prior to the whole
division moving from Avila, Rowland Askerne called Quentin aside,
and, with a face expressive of extreme concern, said--

"I wish to speak particularly with you, Quentin--there is evidently
something most unpleasant on the tapis."

"Regarding what--or who?"

"You, my friend."

"Me--how--in what way?" asked Quentin.

"Baltasar de Saldos, the guerilla, who has been so long in the rear,
wounded, has now joined the division, and has been at the quarters of
Sir John Hope in the Bishop's palace."

"Surely, that matters nothing to me," said Quentin, with growing
anger and alarm.

"Listen.  I was in the street, speaking with the colonel, when the
general, who was bowing out the formidable guerilla, beckoned him,
and on their meeting I heard him say--

"'The information just given me, Colonel Crawford, by the guerilla,
fully corroborates the character you gave me at Portalegre of that
young fellow--what is his name?'

"'Kennedy.'

"'Ah, yes; you remember?'

"'Yes, Sir John,' replied the colonel, turning rather pale, I
thought, as he glanced towards me.

"'But I have spoken with Major Middleton of yours, and unlike you, he
gives him the very highest character.  How am I to reconcile these
discrepancies?'

"Crawford then mumbled I know not what; but it was something about a
previous knowledge of you--of old contumacy and insolence unknown to
others; then I turned away, as it was alike impossible and improper
to listen."

These tidings filled Quentin's breast with rage, alarm, and intense
mortification.  Here was a secret enmity against which there was no
contending, bringing with it accusations of which he knew neither the
nature nor the name.

One moment he felt inclined to rush into the presence of the general,
and boldly demand to know of what his hostile colonel had accused
him; and then there was De Saldos too!  But in approaching Sir John
Hope, he remembered that the proper mode could only be in writing,
the letter being transmitted by the captain of the company to which
he was attached, under cover to Cosmo, his particular enemy (who
might then forward it with such comments as he chose), for such is
the rule and etiquette of the service.

Before he could resolve on what was to be done, while fretting and
chafing in his billet, and just as the bugles were sounding the
warning for the march, the old sergeant-major, Norman Calder,
entered, accompanied by two soldiers of the light company, with their
bayonets fixed.

The faces of his three visitors expressed considerable compunction,
for our young volunteer, as we have said elsewhere, was a favourite
with the whole corps.

"Mr. Kennedy," said Calder, "I have come on a sorrowful errand to
you; but I only obey the orders given to me by my superior officers."

"And these orders are, sir?" demanded Quentin, furiously.

"To disarm you and march you a close prisoner with the quarter-guard."

"For what reason?" asked Quentin, in a faint voice.

"I dinna ken, sir--I have only Colonel Crawford's orders."

"Of what am I accused?"

"That is more than I can say, sir; but if you are innocent you have
nothing to fear.  Take courage and set a stout heart to a steep brae,
as we say at home, and you may turn the flanks of fortune yet," added
the worthy old non-commissioned officer, patting Quentin on the
shoulder, for he saw that this open and public, and most unmerited
humiliation before the entire division, cut him to the soul, and
crushed all his spirit for the time.

* * * * *

The division marched about sunrise, and Quentin, instead of being as
usual with the grenadiers of the gallant Borderers, enjoying the
society of Askerne and other officers, found himself trudging with
the quarter-guard, a special prisoner, and kept apart from all others
under a small escort, that marched on each side of him with muskets
loaded and bayonets fixed; for not being a commissioned officer,
there could be no other arrest for him than a close one.

And thus, with a heavy--heavy heart, full almost to bursting with
mortification and grief, ignorant of the accusations against him and
of what was to be his fate, he marched with the division towards the
ancient city of Alva on the Tormes, which they entered on the evening
of the 4th December, and there, as they were to halt for seven days,
Quentin was informed by Lieutenant Buckle that he was to be tried by
a general court-martial.

He felt that all, indeed, was over with him now!



CHAPTER IX.

THE PRISONER.

  "I would my weary course were o'er,
    Yet scarce can look for end save this,
  To dash to pieces on the shore,
    Or founder in the dark abyss.
  Fond thoughts, sweet hopes! oh, far more blest
    My bosom had it never known
  Your presence, since in vain possest,
    To lose you while you seemed my own."
                              RODRIGUEZ LOBO.


He rapidly learned that the court-martial was in the garrison orders
to assemble on the 5th instant, and that charges of the most serious
nature, involving, perhaps, the terrible penalty of--death, were to
be brought against him!

What sudden mystery--what inexplicable horror was this?

On the night he entered Alva he was relieved from the humiliation of
an armed escort or guard by the influence of Askerne and Warriston,
who both bound themselves by their parole of honour for his
appearance whenever required.  He was thus at liberty to go about the
town, but he cared not to avail himself of it, and remained in his
quarters.

The evening of the 4th of December was dull and gloomy.  Setting amid
saffron haze and shorn of all his beams, the lurid sun looming large
and crimson like a wondrous globe, shed a steady light along the
waters of the Tormes, a deep stream, which there rolls under a high
and ancient bridge, that was afterwards blown up when the British
retreated from Burgos.

An old Moorish wall surrounds Alva, which stands on the slope of a
hill, and there, above its flat-terraced mansions, rises the great
palace of the powerful Dukes of Alva and Berwick, where Ferdinand
Alvarez of Toledo, the terror of the Low Countries and the institutor
of "the Court of Blood," first saw the light.  In an angle of the
Moorish rampart, then crumbling in ruins, stands a high round tower
of considerable strength and antiquity.  Herein was posted the
quarter-guard of the 1st Brigade, and in an upper chamber Quentin had
his billet, and there he sat alone, after the day's march, left to
his own reflections, and these were mournful and gloomy enough.

The aspect of this chamber was little calculated to raise his
drooping spirit.  Almost destitute of furniture, it was built of
massive stone, vaulted, and had three narrow windows, the sides and
horse-shoe arches of which were covered with elaborate zigzag Moorish
ornaments, arabesques, and uncouth inscriptions, which, though he
knew it not, were texts and quotations from the Koran in Arabic.
These had probably been gilded and gaudily coloured once, but now
were simply coated with mouldy whitewash.  One of these windows
opened to the hill on the slope of which stands Alva, and afforded a
view of its tiled and terraced roofs, all drenched by the recent
rain.  Another faced the mountains of Leon, and the third showed the
narrow gorge through which the red and swollen Tormes lay rolling
under the bridge; beyond which, on an eminence, were posted a brigade
of field guns and a cavalry picquet; the horses were linked together,
and the troops cloaked.

All looked wet and dreary, dull and mournful, and as the December sun
went down beyond the dark and purple hills where Salamanca lies, the
pipers of the 92nd played "Lochaber no more," their evening retreat,
and this air, so sad, so slow and wailing, as they marched along the
old Moorish wall, affected Quentin so deeply that he covered his face
with his hands and wept.

What would that fine old soldier, courtier, and cavalier, the mirror
of old-fashioned courage and honour, Lord Rohallion, say or think,
when he heard of his disgrace?  What would Lady Winifred--what the
old quartermaster, John Girvan? and what would the emotions of Flora
Warrender be?

Whether the charges against him were false or true--proved or
refuted--she at least would be lost to him for ever, for his career
was closed ere it was well begun, and he felt that no other road in
life lay open to him.  He felt too, instinctively, that Baltasar de
Saldos and his sister Donna Isidora were in some manner the secret
source of the present evil turn in his fortune; but how or in what
fashion he was yet to learn.

The phrase, that the charges involved death or such other punishment
as a court-martial might award, was ever before him.

The vagueness of the latter recourse, rather than the terror of the
first, cut him to the heart, as all the penalties inflicted by such a
court are severe and disgraceful.

Cosmo, he heard, had suggested that he should be handed over to the
tender mercies of the Spanish civil authorities; but Sir John Hope
insisted that the charges were such as only a military court could
take cognizance of; so what on earth were they?  Unconscious alike of
a mistake or crime, oh, how he longed for the time of trial!

As the darkness of the sombre eve crept on, its gloom was singularly
in unison with his own sombre thoughts.

Bright visions had faded away and airy bubbles burst.  Chateaux en
Espagne were no longer tenable now!  How many gorgeous day-dreams of
glory and honour, of rank and fame, of position in society attained
by worth and merit, were now dissolved in air!  His naturally warm,
generous, and kindly heart had become seared, callous, and
misanthropical.  Experience and the world had tried their worst upon
him, and thus, for a time, a mere boy in years became a
bitter-hearted man, for a day dawn of a glorious ambition seemed to
be sinking prematurely into a black and stormy night.

He had seen so many new places and met such a variety of strangers;
he had been involved in so many episodes, and had experienced so much
by land and sea, and, within a very few months, so much seemed to
have happened, that a dreamy dubiety appeared to obscure the past;
and thus his former monotonous existence at Rohallion--monotonous as
compared with the stir of war--came only at times with clearness, as
it were in gleams and flashes of thought and memory.  He had nothing
tangible about him--not even a lock of Flora's hair--to convince him
of past realities, or that he had ever been elsewhere than with the
25th; and yet out of this chaos Flora's face and figure, her eyes and
expression of feature, her identity, stood strongly forth.  Oh! there
was neither obscurity nor indistinctness there!

And now, amid his sorrow, he felt a keen longing to write to her,
under cover to John Girvan; but then, he reflected, was such a course
honourable in him or deserved by Lord and Lady Rohallion, who hoped
to hail her one day as their daughter-in-law?  And what mattered her
regard for him now--now, with the heavy doom of a court-martial
hanging over his head!  And yet, if even death were to be his fate,
he felt that he would die all the more happily with the knowledge and
surety that Flora still loved him.

Deep, deep indeed were his occasional bursts of bitterness at Cosmo;
but when he remembered that Cosmo's mother had also been a mother to
himself--when all the memory of her love for him, her early kindness,
her caresses, her kisses on his infant brow, her increasing
tenderness--came rushing back upon him, his heart flew to his head,
and Quentin felt that even yet he could almost forgive all the
studied wrong and injustice the narrow spirit and furious jealousy of
her son now made him suffer.  But how were the members of the
regiment or of the division to understand all this!

Amid the reverie in which he had been indulging in the dark, the door
of the upper chamber of the old tower opened, and two officers, in
long regimental cloaks, entered, accompanied by a soldier with a
parcel.

"Well, Quentin, old fellow--how goes it?" said Monkton's cheerful
voice.

"Cheer up, my boy," added Askerne; "before this time to-morrow we
shall have known the worst, and it will be past.  We have brought you
a bottle of capital wine.  It is a present from Ramon Campillo, the
jolly muleteer, who came in after the division, and leaves again, for
the French lines, I fear."

"A sly dog, who butters his bread on both sides, likely," said
Monkton; "my man has brought you a fowl and a loaf, so we shall make
a little supper together."

"Here, boy, drink," said Askerne, when the soldier lighted a candle,
and they all looked with commiseration upon Quentin's pale cheek and
bloodshot eyes; "I insist upon it--you seem ill and weary."

He could perceive that both Askerne and Monkton looked grave,
earnest, and anxious, for they knew more of the charges against him
than they cared to tell.

"At what hour does the court assemble to-morrow?" he asked.

"Ten, Kennedy."

"Who is the president?"

"Colonel Colquhoun Grant, of the King's Light Dragoons--a hussar
corps."

"Where does it meet?" asked Quentin, wearily.

"In one of the rooms of the Alva Palace.  Now we cannot stay above
ten minutes, Quentin.  We are both in orders for the court, which of
course is a mixed one, and this visit, if known, might cost us our
commissions perhaps; but I know Monkton's servant to be a sure
fellow."

"Sure, sir," repeated the soldier, "I should think so!  It was to
_my_ poor wife and child that Mr. Kennedy--the Lord reward him for
it!--gave his blanket on the night we bivouacked at the Escurial,"
added the man, in a broken voice; "the night I lost them both--never
to see them again."

Askerne now asked Quentin many questions concerning his recent
wanderings; the answers to some of these he jotted down in his
note-book; and he gave much good advice for his guidance on the
morrow, adding, with a sigh of annoyance, that he feared there was a
deep scheme formed against him, and that, as several outrages had
been committed by our retreating troops, it was not improbable that
he might be sacrificed to soothe the ruffled feelings of the
Spaniards.

"What leads you to think so?" asked Quentin.

"This subpœna, which Monkton's servant picked up in a wine-house
and brought us," replied Askerne, opening a letter and reading it, as
follows:


  "Head-quarters, Alva-de-Tormes,
        December 4th.

"SENOR PADRE,--A general court-martial having been appointed to be
held here, for the trial of Mr. Quentin Kennedy, serving with the
25th Regiment, upon sundry charges exhibited against him; and the
said Mr. Kennedy having represented that your testimony will be very
material in the investigation of some of the articles of charge, and
having requested that you may be officially summoned as a witness, I
am to desire you, and you are hereby required, to give your
attendance here to-morrow, at ten o'clock in the morning, at which
time it is conceived your evidence will become necessary.

  "I have the honour to be, &c., &c.,
          "LLOYD CONYERS, Staff Captain,
            "Deputy Judge Advocate.

"El Senor Padre Trevino."


"This is some trickery!" exclaimed Quentin; "Trevino is the ruffian
of whom I have spoken more than once; the man's doubly my enemy.
Well, well! save myself, it matters little to any one what becomes of
me," he added bitterly.  "I have no kindred--not a relation that I
know of in the wide world, and save yourselves, no friends now to
regret me or to remember me, save one of whom I cannot speak.  It is
thus better as it is."

"How?" asked Askerne, who grasped him firmly by the hand.

"For if this false accusation, whatever it is, be proved against me,
then none shall blush for my dishonour or sorrow for my fall.  Fools
may laugh and the wicked may jeer, but the death volley will close up
my ears for ever.  It may do more," he added, in a broken voice; "it
may be the means of revealing to me who was my mother, who my father,
with the great secret of eternity after all; so, my dear Askerne, I
am, you see, reckless of the future."

"Damme, Quentin, this will never do----" Monkton was beginning, when
Askerne spoke.

"In this mingled mood of sullenness and resignation you will destroy
all chance of defeating the machinations of your enemy, for such
I--I--consider our colonel to be," said the captain of grenadiers,
after a pause.  "Buckle and I will prepare your declaration for
to-morrow, and it shall be sent to you for revision and emendation
soon after reveille; but you must take courage--I insist upon it, for
your own sake!"

"I do not lack it!" replied Quentin, firmly.

"By courage, I do not mean an indifference that is the result of
misanthropy, or a boldness that is gathered from despair.  At your
years, Quentin, either were unnatural," said Askerne, kindly.

"My brave lad," said Monkton, putting an arm round him as an elder
brother might have done, "have you really no fear of--of death?"

"To say that I have not," replied Quentin, with quivering lip, "would
be to state that which is false; but I know death to be the ordinance
of God--the fate of all mankind.  It is but the end of the course of
time--welcome only to such as are weary of their lives.  I am not
weary of mine, therefore I would indeed find it hard to die.  I have
always known that I must die, but never considered where or how--how
near or how distant the day of doom might be; but I do shrink with
horror at the contemplation of dying with a disgrace upon me--a
stigma which, though I am innocent, time may never remove."

"I fear that we are but poor comforters, and that you are taking the
very blackest view of matters," said Askerne; "but be advised by me,
and take courage--a resolute and modest bearing always wins respect.
In the court to-morrow are friends who will not see you wronged, for
every member there is alike a judge and a juryman.  Put your trust in
Heaven and in your own innocence; sleep well if you can----"

"And be sure to take something by way of breakfast--a broiled bone
and a glass of Valdepenas--you have a long and anxious day before
you."

"And so, till we meet again, good night--God bless you, my hearty!"

They shook him warmly by the hand, and retired.

He heard their footsteps descending the stone steps of the old tower
(erst trod by the feet of many a turbaned Moor and steel-clad
crusader), and then dying away in distance; but soothed and relieved
in mind by a visit performed at such risk by his friends, and hoping
much--he knew not what--from the notes made by Rowland Askerne,
Quentin lay down on his pallet and strove to sleep, amid a silence
broken only by the beating of his own heart, and the rush of the
Tormes in its deep and rocky bed.

"_They_ at least believe in me, and will not desert me!" he repeated
to himself again and again.

But, the brave boyish spirit and hope--the enthusiastic desire to
achieve something great and good, no matter what, by land or sea, by
flood or field--a glorious deed that present men should vaunt, and
those of future times would speak of--where were that hope and spirit
_now_?



CHAPTER X.

THE COURT-MARTIAL.

  "Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control,
  These three alone lead life to sovereign power.
  Yet not for power, (power of herself
  Would come uncall'd for,) but to live by law,
  Acting the law we live by without fear;
  And because right is right, to follow right
  Were wisdom in the scorn of consequence."
                                        TENNYSON.


The court-martial assembled in a large and magnificent apartment of
the Alva palace or castle, which stands in the centre of the town.
It is in a good state of preservation, and the chamber usually
occupied by the terrible duke, with all its ancient furniture, still
remains there in its original state.

On the walls of the great apartment selected for the court hung the
armour of the successive princes of the house of Toledo from a very
remote period--indeed, from the mail shirts that had resisted the
Moorish scimitars down to the steel caps and jacks of the war of the
Spanish succession; and many of the breast-plates were emblazoned
with the armorial bearings and trophies of those warlike dukes who
boast of their descent from the Paleologi Emperors of the East, and
who were first ennobled as peers of Leon by Alphonso VI., or the
Brave, of Castile, in 1085.

As Quentin approached the great embattled door of this stately
mansion, many soldiers of the regiment were crowding about it, and
all these muttered their good wishes; many a hard but honest hand was
held out to him, and many a forage-cap waved in silence, evincing
emotions of good-will that stirred his heart with gratitude, and gave
him new courage as he entered the court, attended by the
provost-marshal.

He certainly looked wan and ill; traces yet remained of his recent
illness at the Villa de Maciera; to these were added anxiety, lack of
proper food and sleep, with the toil and exposure incident to the
campaign, all of which served to give him interest in the eyes of
many, for the court was crowded by spectators, chiefly officers of
nearly every regiment in the division, and a few Spanish citizens and
priests of Alva.

His young face appeared sorrow-struck in feature, and many read
there, in the thoughtful brow, the quivering lip, and the sad but
restless eye, indications of a proud but suffering spirit.  Save
these, and an occasional unconscious twitching of the hands, Quentin,
though awed by the presence, and the hapless and novel predicament in
which he found himself, was calm and collected in appearance.

He was simply clad in his unlaced and plain red coat, without a belt
or accoutrement of any kind, to indicate that he was a prisoner; and
he was accommodated with a chair and separate table, on which lay
writing materials, but these he had not the slightest intention of
using.

At the head of a long table of formidable aspect, whereon lay a Bible
and the "Articles of War," and which was littered with pens, paper,
letters, &c., sat the president of the court, Colonel Colquhoun
Grant, in the gorgeous uniform of the 15th Hussars, blue faced with
red, and the breast a mass of silver embroidery that might have
turned a sword-cut.  He wore the Order of Merit, given to every
officer of his regiment by the Emperor of Germany fourteen years
before, for their unexampled bravery in the affair of Villiers en
Couche, a name still borne on the standard of the Hussars.

The other members, fourteen in number, belonged to different
regiments; but Quentin was truly glad to see among them the familiar
faces of Askerne and two other captains of the Borderers.  All were
in full uniform, and were seated on the right and left of the
president, according to their seniority in the army; Captain Conyers,
acting as judge-advocate, being placed at the foot of the court,
which, by the showy uniform, large epaulettes of silver or gold, the
crimson sashes, and, in four instances, tartan plaids, of the
members, had a very rich and striking appearance as the morning
sunshine streamed along the stately room through six lofty and
latticed windows.

A considerable bustle and treading of feet on the tessellated floor
announced the entrance of the various witnesses, among whom Quentin
recognised the tall figure of the Master of Rohallion, the sturdy
paunch of worthy Major Middleton, the sun-burned faces of Buckle and
others of the Borderers, together with a Dominican monk, in whom,
notwithstanding his freshly-shaven chin, long robe, and knotted
girdle, he recognised, with astonishment, Trevino!  Other guerillas
were present, but the most prominent was Don Baltasar.

The handsome but sallow visage of the latter was pale nearly as that
of a corpse; his bloodless lips and white glistening teeth appeared
ghastly beneath the coal-black and enormous moustaches that were
twisted savagely up to each ear.  His nostrils were contracting and
dilating with wild, mad passion, and it was evident that nothing but
the presence he stood in prevented him from rushing, sword in hand,
on Quentin, and ending, there and then, the proceedings of the court
and our story by immolating him on the spot.

Quite undeterred by his formidable aspect or excitement, some of the
younger officers were seen to quiz Baltasar, whose costume, an
embroidered black velvet jacket, with a pair of British flank-company
wings, and other accessories, was sufficiently mock-heroic, fanciful,
and absurd.

"Who acts as the prisoner's counsel or friend?" asked Colonel Grant,
the president.

"I--Captain Warriston, 94th--Scots Brigade," said the full mellow
voice of that officer, as he entered, fully accoutred with sword,
sash, and gorget, and took his seat at the little table beside
Quentin Kennedy, who, at the moment, felt his heart very full indeed.

Captain Conyers now read the order for assembling the court, and then
the members, each with his ungloved right hand placed upon the open
Bible, were sworn the usual oath, "to administer justice according to
the rules and articles for the better government of his Majesty's
forces, &c., without partiality, favour, or affection, &c.; and
further, not to divulge the sentence of the court until approved of,
or the vote or opinion of any member thereof, unless required to do
so by a court of law."

This formula over, the judge advocate desired Quentin to stand while
the charges against him were read; and to his utter bewilderment they
ran thus, briefly, as we omit many dates and repetitions:--

"Mr. Quentin Kennedy, volunteer, serving with his Majesty's 25th
Foot, accused in the following instances of conduct unbecoming a
gentleman and soldier:

"_First;_ of rescuing by the strong hand a French officer and lawful
prisoner of war from Don Baltasar de Saldos, in direct violation of
the 51st clause of the 2nd section of the 'Articles of War.'

"_Second;_ of giving the rescued prisoner such intelligence as
enabled the enemy, then cantoned in Valencia de Alcantara, to
anticipate, by a combined attack, the junction about to be formed by
the guerilla force of Don Baltasar with the division of the allied
army under Lieutenant-General Sir John Hope, and thus causing the
loss of five field-guns and many Spanish subjects.

"_Third;_ of snaring away from the cantonment at Herreruela the
sister of Don Baltasar de Saldos, who has not since been heard of,
her fate being thus involved in mystery, or worse, and thereby the
prisoner contravened the order issued by Sir John Moore, urging the
conciliation of the Spanish people on the army entering Castile.

"_Fourth;_ of assaulting in the town of Merida, to the effusion of
blood, the Reverend Padre Trevino, lately a Dominican monk of
Salamanca, and now chaplain to Don Baltasar de Saldos, in direct
contravention of the 37th clause of the 2nd section of the 'Articles
of War,' concerning any officer or soldier 'who shall offer violence
to a chaplain of the army or to _any other minister of God's word_.'

"_Fifth;_ of plundering an inhabitant to the extent of at least
eighty gold moidores, part of which were found in his baggage and
part given to the paymaster of his Majesty's 25th Foot for
transmission home.

"_Sixth;_ for refusing or declining to take another despatch to Don
Baltasar, from Montijo, and thereby showing a complicity with the
enemy and dread of detection by the loyal party in Spain."

So ended this farrago of words.

Aware that sooner or later the proceedings of the court-martial
(which we can assure the reader made some noise at the time) would be
read at Rohallion, Colonel Crawford had all the charges framed in the
name of the general of division.

"Oh, Cosmo!" thought Quentin, "you aim not only at my life, but at my
honour!"

"Well, 'pon my soul," thought the Master, after he heard the list of
charges read, "if the fellow gets over all these, I'll say that, with
a fair match, and equally weighted, he might run a race with the
devil himself!"

Quentin pleaded _not guilty_.

The court was then cleared of the witnesses and the proceedings
commenced.

With the regular detail of these we have no intention of afflicting
the reader; suffice it, that the solemn and dreary writing down of
every question and answer so lengthened them out that they became a
source of irritation and agony to one whose temperament was so sharp
and impetuous as that of Quentin Kennedy, burning as he was with
indignation at accusations so false and so unmerited, and some of
which he had a difficulty in refuting; and, we regret to add, that
the form of procedure was then, as it is still, old-fashioned,
cumbrous, loose, and tedious.

There was no regular legal counsel for the prisoner or for the
prosecution either; no cross-examination, save such as might emanate
from some unusually sharp fellow, who kept himself awake, and
affected to take notes, when in reality he was caricaturing
Middleton's pigtail, Smith's paunch, and Brown's nose.

The witnesses were sometimes examined pell-mell, just as their names
stood on the list; their evidence, however, being carefully written
down, to the end that it might be read over to them for after-thought
or revision before the opinions of the court, as to guilt and
sentence, were asked; a formula that always begins with the junior
member, the president having the casting vote.

Such was then, as it is now, the somewhat rambling, free and easy
tenor of a general court-martial; yet, with all its idiosyncrasies,
it is ever a just and honourable tribunal, and such as no true
soldier would ever wish to change for a civil one.  Every member
sworn is bound to give an opinion.  In the French service a military
offence can be tried after the lapse of ten years; with us, the
period is three.

Warriston objected to the competency of the court; but the president
over-ruled his objection by stating that a Volunteer of the Line,
like every other camp-follower, was amenable to the "Articles of War."

The transmission of the despatch to Don Baltasar was easily proved by
Cosmo and others, and by the reply, which lay on the table.

Though handsome and soldierly in aspect and bearing, the Master of
Rohallion could scarcely conceal a very decided animus in delivering
his evidence.  Brave and proud, he was yet weak enough and small
enough in mind to _hate_ Quentin Kennedy with that species of
animosity which is always the most bitter, because it arises from a
sense of unmerited wrong done to the weaker victim.

In answer to a question by the president:

"Of the prisoner's antecedents," said he, "I know very little--little
at least that is good or honourable."

"Colonel Crawford, you will be so good as explain."

"He was received as an orphan, an outcast, I believe, into the house
of my father, General Lord Rohallion, when I was serving with the
Brigade of Guards.  That house he deserted ungratefully and
disappeared for a time, no trace of him being discovered but a
silver-mounted walking-stick, which I knew to be his, and which was
found beside a murdered man, a vagrant or gipsy, in the vault of an
old ruin called Kilhenzie.  How it came there, I pretend not to say;
but on searching the vault, whither my pointers led me, I picked up
the stick, with marks of blood upon it, some days after the body had
been taken away."

On hearing this cruel and artful speech, which contained so much of
reality, Quentin almost started from his chair, his eyes flashing and
his pale nether lip quivering with rage; but Warriston held him
forcibly back.

"Prisoner," said the president, "do you know a place in Scotland
called the castle of Kilhenzie?"

"I do not understand the meaning of this question," said Captain
Warriston, rising impetuously, "and to it I object!  It is not
precise on the part of the prosecution, and discloses an intention of
following up a line of examination of which neither the prisoner nor
his _amici curiæ_ have received due notice, and which, moreover, is
not stated in the six charges before the court."

After a consultation, Colonel Grant replied:

"The line of examination in this instance, Captain Warriston, is to
prove previous character; thus we find it quite relevant to question
the prisoner concerning the episode referred to.  It may bear very
materially on other matters before the court.  Mr. Kennedy, do you
know a place called Kilhenzie?"

"I do, sir," said Quentin, and for a moment there rushed upon his
memory recollections of many a happy hour spent there with Flora
Warrender, near its crumbling walls and giant dule-tree.

"Are you aware of any remarkable circumstance occurring there in
which you were an actor?"

Poor Quentin's pallor now gave way to a flush of shame and honest
anger; but he replied--

"Driven into the ruin by a torrent of rain, I found a dead body lying
there among the straw; it filled me with alarm and dismay, so I
hastened from the place."

"Leaving behind you a walking-stick?"

"Yes, sir; it would appear so."

"Covered with blood."

"Most likely," said Quentin, remembering the wound he had received
from Cosmo's hand.

"All this, Colonel Grant, has nothing to do with the case," urged
Warriston, firmly.

"It seems to cast grave doubts on the previous character and
antecedents of the prisoner."

"It seems also to show the peculiar vindictiveness of the
prosecution."

"You are unwise, Captain Warriston," said the president, severely.

"I am here as the friend of the prisoner."

"For what reason did you leave the castle of Rohallion?" asked the
court.

Quentin gazed full at the Master with his eyes flashing so
dangerously that this personage, fearing he might be driven to say
something which might bring ridicule on him--though Quentin would
rather have died than uttered Flora's name there--begged that the
first charge might be proceeded with.

Sworn across two drawn swords in the Spanish fashion, Baltasar,
Trevino, and other guerillas, inspired by spite and hostility,
related in succession how Quentin had rescued the French prisoner;
how he had undertaken to conduct Donna Isidora in safety to
Portalegre, a mere day's ride; but had made away with her, on the
road, in some manner unknown, as well as with a horse and mule, the
property of her brother.

"A singular duenna to have charge of a young Spanish beauty--eh,
Carysfort?" he heard a hussar say.

"By Jove, Villars, I wish it had been my luck--that's all," was the
laughing reply.

Quentin wished the same with all his heart.

Then came details of the attack made on the guerillas by
Ribeaupierre's cavalry brigade.  The charge of giving intelligence to
the enemy was based on bare assumption, and was unsupported by a
tittle of evidence.

Next followed the Padre Trevino, costumed for the occasion and
effect, a rare example of a wolf in sheep's clothing, who showed his
wounded caput, and told, in a whining voice, the sorrowful story of
his maltreatment at the aqueduct of Merida, whither he had gone to
pray in solitude.  The assault was proved beyond a doubt by the
evidence of a certain Martin Sedillo, an ill-looking dog with one
eye, formerly an alguazil of Salamanca and now a guerilla, who swore
distinctly that he saw Quentin beat the padre down with the butt-end
of his musket.

"You distinctly saw him strike the padre down?" repeated Colonel
Grant.

"Si, senor presidente y senores oficiales," said the guerilla, bowing
low.

"Wantonly?"

"Most wantonly, senores."

"Retire.  Call the next witness on the list--private Allan Grange,
25th Foot."

To the Borderer, on his entrance, the previous questions were
repeated by the court.

"Yes, sir--I saw Mr. Kennedy strike down the guerilla (who was not
then habited like a friar) with his clubbed musket, but only in time
to save his life from _this dagger_, which I took from the hand of
his reverence."

As he spoke, Allan Grange handed a knife of very ugly aspect to the
president, who saw the name _Trevino_ burned, by a hot iron, on the
haft.

"Allan Grange, were you ever tried by a court-martial?" asked the
judge advocate, looking among his memoranda for one furnished by
Colonel Crawford.

"Yes, sir," faltered the soldier, growing red and pale by turns.

"And were reduced to the ranks, at Colchester?"

"Yes, sir," he replied, sadly.

"And you were sentenced to be flogged--three hundred lashes, I think,
by the Defaulter's Book?"

"A sentence kindly remitted by Major Middleton," said Grange, proudly.

"There, this will do--you may go," said Colonel Grant; and then some
of the members smiled and looked at each other, as much as to say,
"we see how much your evidence is worth."

Quentin knew that Donna Isidora was in the French camp; but when
Warriston mentioned this to be the case, the only witness called to
prove it, Lieutenant Monkton, was unable to repeat what Ribeaupierre
said, as he had been beyond hearing at that particular moment.

On the fifth charge, concerning the gold moidores, Quentin thought
himself bewitched when the one-eyed guerilla, Martin Sedillo,
deliberately swore, with the drawn swords of two officers crossed
under his bearded chin, "that he was plundered of them at Herreruela
by the prisoner, whom he was ready to warrant as false as Galalou!"

"Who was he?" inquired Askerne, looking at his watch impatiently for
the third time.

"Galalou betrayed the French army at Roncesvalles," said Colonel
Grant; "as we say in Scotland, false as Menteith.  It is a local
phrase."

His refusal to bear another despatch to De Saldos was easily proved,
and that circumstance seemed to corroborate much that had preceded it.

Matters were now looking gloomy indeed.  Quentin became sick at
heart; he drained his water-jug, yet his lips grew parched and dry;
he felt the toils closing around him, and already, in fancy, he heard
the president passing the terrible sentence of death!

The bitter conviction came home to his soul, that hate and wiles,
against which it was in vain for innocence to contend, were
triumphing over him; and that even if pardoned, the memory that he
had been arraigned, and on such cruel charges, would live!

Shame for unmerited reproach and unavailing sorrow for a lost
youth--a blighted, it might be, a long life taken away, and perhaps
by a shameful death--were some of the deep, the bitter, and stinging
emotions felt on this day by poor Quentin Kennedy.

While that court-martial lasted he lived a lifetime in every hour of
it!

His declaration or defence, read by Warriston, was simply a
recapitulation of some of the leading features of our narrative,
which he had no means of substantiating; the mass of evidence against
him was summed up, but was too strong in some points to be easily
disposed of.  His youth and inexperience were dwelt upon, but it
seemed without much avail.  Neither did the warm manner in which
Major Middleton, Buckle, Sergeant-major Calder and others, bore
testimony to his spotless character, seem to find much weight.  To
satisfy the Spaniards, a victim was wanted, and here was one ready
made to hand.

It was now nearly four o'clock, and the Court was about to be cleared
for the consideration of the opinion and sentence, when the sharp and
well-known twang of a French cavalry trumpet rang in the court before
the palace, and the tramping of horses was heard.

"Thank God!" muttered Askerne (who had frequently consulted his
watch) as he exchanged a rapid glance with Monkton; "that muleteer
has served us well!"

At that moment of terrible expectation an officer of the 7th Hussars
entered hastily, and presented a note to the judge advocate.

"What interruption is this, Captain Conyers?" asked Colonel Grant,
sternly.

"An officer from the French lines, come in under a flag of truce,
requests to be examined by the Court for the defence," replied
Conyers.

Every face present expressed extreme astonishment.

"What is his name?" asked the president.

"Eugene de Ribeaupierre--sous-lieutenant of the 24th Chasseurs à
Cheval," said Conyers, consulting an embossed calling-card.

"Is it he whose name occurs so frequently in the declaration of the
prisoner?"

"Most probably, sir."

"Admit him."

The clank of a sabre and the jingle of steel spurs were heard, and
then Eugene de Ribeaupierre, looking handsome and gay, but flushed
after a long ride from Fonteveros, entered, helmet in hand, and bowed
low to the Court and all who were present.

"Ha, mon ami!" said he, shaking Quentin's hand with warmth, "I am
come in time, I hope; the proceedings are not yet closed, monsieur?"
he asked anxiously of the president.

"No--but how did _you_ come to hear of them?" was the suspicious
question.

"From Ramon Campillo, a muleteer of Miranda del Ebro; the same person
who conveyed M. Kennedy from the Villa de Maciera to Portalegre, and
who was passing through our camp this morning.  He came expressly to
my tent to tell me all about it, and that charges were to be made
which I alone could refute.  I reported the affair to my father, the
General, who generously gave me leave to come here, with an
escort--so I have come, messieurs, to be sworn and examined."

"Askerne," whispered Monkton, "you are a rare fellow!"

"How, Willie?"

"Damme, by your foresight we shall yet baffle Crawford, De Saldos,
Trevino and Co.!"

"Hush, hush!  You are rash."

It is almost needless to describe how the young French officer, after
being duly sworn by the judge advocate, corroborated in every
particular the statement made in Quentin's declaration--statements of
which he could have had no previous cognisance, save as an actor in
the episodes referred to.  He described how Quentin had saved his
life from a deliberate attempt at assassination on the part of De
Saldos, and became strongly excited on referring to the infamous
massacre of the prisoners by Trevino.  He asserted that the moidores
were taken by himself from the holsters of Raoul, a dead corporal of
his troop, who found them amid the plunder of Coimbra.  He asserted,
on his oath and honour as an officer and chevalier of the Legion of
Honour, that the movement made by the troops of his father,
collaterally with those of General Hope and the guerillas of
Baltasar, was not consequent to any information given him by the
prisoner, but had been resolved on long before, as a printed order of
the emperor, which he had the honour to lay on the table, would amply
testify!

As for Donna Isidora, he freely and laughingly acknowledged that he
had carried her away from the villa, and that she was now Madame de
Marbœuf, wife of his friend Jules de Marbœuf, colonel of the
24th, as the Padre Florez, who, ignorant of that auspicious event,
had come to effect her release from the French camp, could now
substantiate, as he was now without the court, and ready to appear.

The long, thin figure of the padre, wearing his flowing soutan and
shovel hat, next appeared to corroborate all this, and also to state
the sickly condition in which he handed over Quentin to the muleteers
at the Villa de Maciera.

"Every link is thus supplied beyond a doubt!" exclaimed Colonel Grant.

Quentin was acquitted amid a burst of applause that found an echo in
the hearty hurrah given by the King's Own Borderers in the palace
square without.

"And now, monsieur," said Ribeaupierre, presenting Quentin with a
valuable diamond ring, "accept this as a present from madame my
mother, who drew it from her finger as I left the camp, with the
request that you will wear it for her sake, and in memory of the day
on which you saved my life from that barbarous Spaniard among the
mountains of Herreruela."

Within an hour after rendering service so valuable, and indeed so
priceless, and after having some luncheon with Askerne, Grant,
Conyers, and other officers who composed the court, the gallant and
generous Ribeaupierre had mounted and ridden from Alva de Tormes,
attended by a strong escort, in front of which rode a Polish lancer,
with a white handkerchief in token of truce streaming from the head
of his lance; and so ended--like a dream to Quentin--this episode,
this chivalric intervention, which was dictated by a noble spirit
worthy of the knightly days of the Chevalier Bayard, or of Bertrand
du Guesclin.



CHAPTER XI.

LOVE ME.

  "You do return me back on memory's path
  To dear remembered scenes.  Old Scotland's scenes!
  It is a glorious land!  I long to roam,
  Doubly a lover, 'mong its wildest charms;
  Its glens, its rocky coast, its towering cliffs
  Come o'er me like a dream of infancy,
  Startling the soul to momentary rapture;
  It is the voice of home!"--DANIEL.


Two or three days passed before Quentin quite recovered his
equanimity, or felt assured of his safety, and then as the whole
affair of the court-martial seemed like a night-mare, he might have
deemed it all a dream, but for the occasional comments and
congratulations of his friends, and for the splendid gift of Madame
de Ribeaupierre, which he prized greatly for its whole history, and
which he longed greatly to place on one of Flora Warrender's tiny
fingers.

Three days after the sitting of the court, tidings came to Alva that
Baltasar de Saldos and his guerilla force had suffered a sharp
repulse with great loss by the French, whose post at Fonteveras they
had attacked with unexampled fury and blind rashness--both perhaps
inspired by Donna Isidora's defection from her country's cause--and
that in the confused retreat upon Hope's picquets, the luckless
Baltasar had been shot dead by one of the Westphalian Light Horse.

We are not ashamed to say that Quentin on hearing this from Major
Middleton, felt a species of relief, self-preservation being one of
the first laws of nature, and he never could have felt himself
perfectly safe in Spain while Baltasar de Saldos trod its soil.

Reflection on all the past served but to embitter the disgust and
wrath with which he viewed the bearing of Cosmo Crawford at the
recent trial, his whole connexion with it, and the terrible and
hopeless malevolence he exhibited in reference to the episode at
Kilhenzie, an affair which there was some difficulty in explaining,
without referring to other and irrelevant matters; so Quentin burned
with impatient eagerness for a general engagement with the French,
for anything that would serve to blot out the recollection of his
late unmerited humiliation; but he never thought of the enemy now
without the face, figure, and voice of his friend Ribeaupierre rising
upbraidingly before him.

Cosmo could have dismissed Quentin from the regiment, with or without
cause, a colonel being himself sole judge of the expediency of so
getting rid of a volunteer; but he was ashamed that his own family
should hear of an act so petty.  The onus of the futile court-martial
fell on the general of division, and there were many chances against
Quentin ever relating its secret history at Rohallion, as ere long
bullets would be flying thick as winter hail.

Amid that confidence which is inspired by a borrachio-skin of good
Valdepenas, varied by stiff brandy-and-water, Quentin, so far as he
deemed necessary or right, made "a clean breast of it" to his friends
and comrades, and detailed anew his adventures on the road from
Herreruela and at the Villa de Maciera.  Though he was complimented
by Warriston and Askerne, whose praise was of value, there were not a
few, such as Monkton, Colville, Ensigns Colyear, Boyle and others,
who laughed immoderately, and voted him "a downright spoon"--wishing
"such jolly good-luck had been theirs as to have a dazzling Castilian
chucking herself at their heads."

"Yes, damme," said Monkton, "I should have had another story to tell;
though, certainly, Kennedy, your Dulcinea did not 'let concealment
like a worm i' the bud'--how does the quotation end?  Now, Pimple,
are you going to keep that blessed borrachio-skin all night?  Why,
man, you have squeezed it till it has become like a half-empty
bagpipe."

Elsewhere we have mentioned that, after reading the famous newspaper
paragraph which made such a commotion among the secluded household at
Rohallion, the quartermaster offered to write to Quentin, and that
Flora gave him a tiny note to enclose in his letter.

So it was on this night, when returning from Monkton's billet to his
own, with a head none of the clearest, after talking a vast deal,
smoking cigars and drinking the country wine, that Quentin was
startled--completely sobered, in fact--by his servant placing in his
hand a letter, and saying briefly that "the mail had come up that
evening from the rear," which meant from Lisbon.

This letter was covered by such a multitude of post-marks that some
time elapsed before Quentin--all unused to receive such
documents--could bring himself to examine the contents; nor, in his
mute astonishment, did he do so, until he had fully deciphered the
address, which was in old John Girvan's hand, and the seal, an
antiquated button of the 25th Foot, with the number, of course,
reversed.

Every word seemed like _a voice from home_, and all the past--faces,
forms, scenes, and places, came like a living and moving panorama on
his memory.

Then, almost giddy with delight, a heart tremulous with anxiety, and
eyes that grew moist--so moist, indeed, that for some seconds he
could see no more than that the letter was dated more than a month
back, Quentin was striving to read the square, old-fashioned writing
of his early friend, when something dropped from between the pages--a
tiny note, sealed by blue wax--the crest a hare _sejant_, the
cognisance of the Warrenders.

Excited anew, he opened this with extreme care but tremulous haste.
It was a single sheet of note-paper, on which two words were written,
in a hand he knew right well--_From Flora_--and in it was a valuable
ring, studded with precious stones.

We are compelled to admit that Quentin kissed the words and the ring
some dozen times or so before he put the paper containing the former
next his heart, in the most approved manner of all lovers, and the
circlet on his finger, where he continued to admire it from time to
time, while deciphering the long and somewhat prosy, but kind letter
of his worthy old friend, who evidently knew nothing about the
unlucky court-martial being on the tapis when he wrote it, Lord
Rohallion's startling reply from the Horse Guards not having then
arrived.


"MY DEAR QUENTIN,--And so by God's providence, through the humble
medium of a stray newspaper, we have found you at last!  Ye rash and
ungrateful callant to leave us all in such a fashion, and well-nigh
unto demented lest you had come to skaith or evil.  I'll never forget
the night the news first came to Rohallion that you had been found.
You mind o' my auld Flanders greybeard--the Roman amphora, as the
dominie calls it--he and I, wi' Spillsby and auld Jack Andrews,
emptied it to the last drop, drinking your health, pouring forth
libations in your honour, as Symon Skail hath it, and singing 'Should
auld acquaintance be forgot' as we have never sung it since Robbie
Burns left Mossgiel.

"And so, Quentin, my lad, ye have gone forth even as I went, nigh
half a century ago, and have joined the glorious old 25th too!  The
Lord's blessing be on the old number, wherever it be--even on the
head of a beer barrel!  I joined the Borderers with little more than
my father's benediction on my head, and, what served me better, one
of my mother's pease-bannocks in my pouch.  After Minden I came home
a corporal, and proud I am to say, that I was the poor wayworn
soldier-lad whom Burns saw passing the inn at Brownhill, and whom he
invited to share his supper on the night he wrote his song--

  "When wild war's deadly blast had blawn."

But ere long, by putting my trust in Providence (and a gude deal in
pipeclay), I became, as I am now, and hope you one day shall be, a
commissioned officer!

"As for Cosmo the Master, I fear me you'll find him a harsh and
severe colonel.  He was aye a dour laddie, and a heartbreak to his
mother.

"The Lord and the Lady Rohallion, and a' body here, down to the
running footman, send you their best remembrances.  Miss Flora, of
Ardgour, writes for herself, and what her note contains is no
business of _mine_.  Yesterday I caught her looking at the map of
Spain in the library, and then she turned to that of Europe.

"'Girvanmains, it seems only the length of a finger from here to
Spain,' said she, placing a bonnie white hand on the map, 'and yet it
is so far--so _very_ far away!'

"She often comes into my snuggery and speaks of you, the puir lassie,
with her eyes and heart full.  She has taken your terrier as her
peculiar care, and sees that the gamekeeper has your guns and
fishing-tackle always in order, for she looks forward, doubtless, to
a time when you will need them all again.

"She is as handsome and high-spirited as ever!  Young Ferny of
Fernwoodlee, dangles pretty closely about her now, and village
gossips say they may make a good match, as his lands march with the
haughs of Ardgour.  If they do, I am sure you won't care much about
it now, for active service rubs all soft nonsense out of a young
fellow's head, just as his waistbelt rubs his coat bare.  (How little
the worthy quartermaster, as he blundered on, conceived that he was
now sticking pins and needles into poor Quentin by this incidental
communication about the young fox-hunting laird of Fernwoodlee!)

"A long war is before us, Quentin, lad, and you're certain to rise in
the service and be spoken about in future times, as Wolfe and
Abercrombie are now.  Maybe I'll not live to see the day--at my years
it is not likely, but I know that it _will_ happen for all that, when
the grass is growing green above me in the auld kirkyard up the glen.

"The dominie--he is sitting opposite me brewing his toddy at this
moment--hopes that you have not fallen into the vile habit of
uttering oaths--a habit peculiar to gentlemen of our army ever since
it 'swore so terribly in Flanders.'  He bids me say that 'from a
common custom of swearing, according to Hierocles (some Roman loon, I
warrant) men easily slide into falsity; therefore do not use to
swear.'  He also hopes that you are not becoming contaminated in
those realms of the Pope, who, though he founded all the bishoprics
and most of the universities of Christendom, enjoyeth the evil repute
of being little better than a Pagan and idolater among us here in
Carrick.  Moreover, ye are in an especial manner to avoid the snares
of the female sex, and remember the mischief that was wrought by a
light limmer named Helen of Troy.

"From myself, dear Quentin, I say avoid all duellists, drunkards,
gamblers, and fools; as a good old friend of mine--a brave soldier,
too--saith in his book, 'Provide for your soul, and God will provide
for your honour.  If your name be forgot in the annals of time, it
will make a noble figure in the muster-roll of eternity.'

"If you are short of the needful, I have still a few more golden shot
in the locker, so fail not to draw on me through Greenwood and Cox,
or your paymaster.

"I would give much, if I had it, to have one glimpse of the old corps
again, though no one in it, I suppose, remembers old John Girvan now!

"Are the bringers-up still dressed from the right flank by a flam on
the drum?  Does the colonel still use a speaking-trumpet?  Is the
point of war beaten now in honour of every new commission?  Are the
sergeants' pikes still stretchers for the wounded?  Are pigtails
always dressed straight by the back seam of the coat, and--but Lord!
Lord! what am I asking?  I clean forgot that the service is going to
the devil, for the order that abolished the queues will be the ruin
of it, from the Horse Guards to the Hottentot battalions!  I can't
fancy the 25th, like the Manx cats, with their tails cut off!  In my
time there would have been open mutiny if the atrocity had been
attempted.

"Even the hair-powder is passing out of fashion now, unless a colonel
happens to be powdered by time.  Gentlemanly spirit will pass away
too, I fear me, and the cautious time will come when a man will think
twice before accepting an invitation to go out with a brother officer
and breathe the morning air, about reveillez, at ten paces, with a
pair of saw-handled pops.

"In Rohallion's time the 25th used to wear their hair and pigtails so
floured and pomatumed that many a good meal the barrack rats have
made off our caputs, when we lay asleep on the wood benches of the
guard-house.

"And they (the Horse Guards, we presume) have substituted cloth
pantaloons for the pipe-clayed breeches in which we fought at Minden
and New York.  This _may_ be an improvement, for, in my time, our
pipeclayed smalls were often a mass of mud on the march, and in wet
weather one might as well have been in a bog of quick lime, for they
regularly skinned us.

"And now, Quentin, my dear, dear laddie, to close an ower lang
letter."

To Askerne, who came in at that moment, Quentin showed the letter of
the worthy veteran, and it proved to the captain a source of some
amusement, so quaint and old-fashioned were Girvan's ideas of the
regiment and of the service.

"Well, Kennedy, what does Miss Flora's letter contain--eh?" asked
Askerne, with a waggish smile.

"Don't jest, pray--I depend on your honour."

"You may, indeed, Quentin."

"It contained only this ring."

"Oho!" exclaimed Askerne, with a merry laugh, "these stones tell a
story, my friend."

"A story!"

"Yes."

"How?"

"Is it possible that you don't know?  Read their names; collect the
initial letters, and tell me what they make?"

"Lapis-lazuli, opal, verde-antique, emerald, malachite, emerald."

"Well--what are these?"

"LOVE ME!" said Quentin, colouring with pleasure and surprise.

"The language of the stones seems new to you, Kennedy; but you are in
luck, my friend.  Who is the donor?"

"A dear, dear friend."

"Flora, you say--are you sure it is not Donna Isidora?"

"Impossible--thank Heaven!--a Miss Flora Warrender."

"Warrender--Warrender--I know that name; is she of Ardgour?"

"The same."

"Her father fell at the head of the Corsican Rangers, in Egypt.  I
knew him well--a brave old fellow as ever wore a red coat."

"You will not speak of this before our fellows?" urged Quentin,
earnestly.

"Betray confidence! you have my word, Kennedy.  And now let me to
bed.  I am for the baggage-guard; as we are falling back, it starts
with the artillery, two hours before the division marches to-morrow."

The ring had now a new interest in Quentin's eyes, and he was never
tired of reading the six mystical stones.

"Dearest Flora," he said to himself, "how happy I am now, that not
even that lovely Spaniard could for a moment tempt me to forget you!"

For all that, the "lovely Spaniard" was very nearly doing a vast deal
of mischief.

Finding that he was alone, and all was quiet in his billet, he sat
far into the hours of the silent night, writing a long, long letter
to his friend the quartermaster--the story of his past adventures;
and to Flora he enclosed the only gift he possessed--the ring of
Madame de Ribeaupierre--with its remarkable story, and he had barely
sealed the envelope when he heard the warning bugle for the
baggage-guard to turn out sounding in the dark and silent streets of
Alva; and then, with a weary head but happy heart, he sought his
pallet, and without undressing, courted sleep for a couple of hours,
before the drums of the division beat the _générale_.



CHAPTER XII.

THE OLD BRIGADIER.

  "I cannot deem why men so toil for fame,
    A porter is a porter, though his load
    Be the oceaned world, and although his road
  Be down the ages.  What is in a name?
  Ah! 'tis our spirit's curse to strive and seek.
    Although its heart is rich in pearls and ores,
    The sea, complains upon a thousand shores;
  Sea-like we moan for ever."--ALEXANDER SMITH.


By this time the snows of a bleak and early winter lay deep in the
grassy glens and on the heathery hills of Carrick; the mountain burns
and rivulets that whilome flowed to the Doon and the Girvan were
frozen hard and fast, and, suspended in mid-air, the cascade of the
Lollards' Linn hung under its gothic arch like the beard of Father
Christmas.  Long icicles hung from the eaves of the houses and from
the quaint stone gurgoyles of the old square keep.

The sound of the woodman's axe echoed in the leafless oakwood shaw
and the brown thickets of Ardgour, and everywhere the hedges and
trees were being lopped and trimmed by the shears or bill-hook of the
gardener and husbandman.

In the clear frosty air, from many a mountain loch rang up the cheers
of the jovial curlers, with the roar of the granite curling-stones as
they swept along the glassy _rinks_, and many a hearty fellow
anticipated, his appetite sharpened by the frosty air, the banquet of
salt beef and greens, with steaming whisky toddy, that closed his
day's sport, at the Rohallion Arms in Maybole.

The cattle were in their heather-roofed shielings on the sheltered
sides of the hills, the sheep and swine were among the pea-ricks, the
dusky smoke of the ruddy winter fire ascended into the clear blue air
from many a happy hearth and thatched homestead; but, as the roads
that wound over hill and lea were buried deep in snow, news of the
distant war in Spain come slowly and uncertainly to such remote
dwellings as the castle of Rohallion--how much more uncertainly and
slowly to those glens in Sutherland and Ross, where a few heaps of
stones amid the desert waste now mark the birthplaces of those who
manned the ranks of our noblest Scottish regiments in that old and
glorious war.

As yet no further tidings had been heard either of Quentin Kennedy or
of his court-martial.  All that had been heard at home, through the
columns of the London _Courier_, was that the slender army of Sir
John Moore was falling back before the overwhelming masses of the
enemy, and that ere long all might be confusion in its ranks--perhaps
dismay!

After the receipt of the Adjutant-General Sir Harry Calvert's letter,
the public papers were searched in vain for further tidings of
Quentin Kennedy, but none were found.  "Our own correspondent," with
his camp-gossip, had no place in the newspaper columns of those days.
The mails were then often late and always uncertain; many that came
by sea were lost between storms and privateers, and the vague anxiety
of Quentin's friends gradually became painful suspense, and amid it
Lord Rohallion once more _wrote with energy_ recommending his young
protégé to the duke.

Dinner was over, and the wax-candles in the candelabra and girandoles
of crystal had been lighted in the antique yellow drawing-room; Lady
Rohallion, seated as usual in her own corner, was engaged, according
to her wont, upon some piece of knitting or other work for the poor
or old folks on the estate; her grey hair, somewhat needlessly
powdered, was dressed back as of old.  Lord Rohallion had brought his
decanter of claret with him into the drawing-room and placed it on a
guéridon table by his side; and there he sat, in a cushioned
easy-chair, lingering over the wine, and gazing dreamily into the
large fire that blazed in the old-fashioned brass-basket between the
delf-lined jambs of the fireplace.

The wind was sighing through the old sycamores of the avenue, and the
roar of the sea was heard on the Partan Craig.

Flora was idling over the piano, practising the "Battle of Prague,"
the Duke of York's grand march, or some such piece of music then in
vogue with young ladies, and near her hovered her present admirer,
Jack Ferny of Fernwoodlee, a good-looking but brainless young fellow
with sandy hair and a pea-green hunting-coat of the fast kind worn
when the Pavilion was in its glory at Brighton.  Ferny's estate was a
small one, and he was evidently, as gossips said, "doing his best to
make ducks and drakes of it."

He was strongly addicted to betting, and was a keen fox-hunter and
sportsman.  Beyond the kennel or the stable he had very few ideas;
and so little capability had he of adapting his conversation to time,
place, or person, that he was now prosing away to the preoccupied
Flora about sporting matters.

First it was of a famous match against time by the noted pedestrian,
Captain Barclay of Urie; and next, how, when coursing among the
Carrick hills, his two favourite stag-hounds so pressed a hare they
had put up yesterday, that she leaped down a precipice more than
fifty feet in height, and then the hounds followed without the
slightest hesitation.

"Good heavens! they were killed, of course!" said Flora, looking up
with wonder.

"Killed, Miss Warrender?--egad, no!  To the astonishment of us all,
we saw puss and the hounds scouring along the road towards Maybole;
but the Ayr stage, coming up with four spanking greys, caused her to
make for a field of grass, and though turned five several times by
the hounds, she made her escape down a burn at last, for of course
they lost the scent."

Finding that Flora had relapsed into listlessness, and that he failed
to interest her by his scraps of information on the Newmarket Craven
meeting, such as his horse Rolla, eight stone, running against Lord
Sackville's Tag, also eight stone, across the flat for a thousand
guineas, and that three to one was being taken on Rolla; that the
betting was even at Epsom on the brown colt, by Eclipse, out of Mrs.
Fitzherbert, and other gossip of similar character, he was compelled
to resume his place near the old Lord, who was just in the act of
pressing him politely to join in another glass of claret, when Jack
Andrews limped in with a letter, which the running-footman had at
that moment brought from Maybole.  The mail from Ayr had broken down
near the bank of the Boon in the snow, and the guard had brought on
the bags to Dalrymple, on one of the horses, at the risk of his life.
Oblong and official, the cover of the letter showed that it was "On
His Majesty's service."

"News of Quentin Kennedy, doubtless," said Lord Rohallion, peering
about for his eye-glass.

"I pray God it be not unfortunate news about Cosmo!" thought Lady
Winifred, for the tidings that came to many a poor mother in those
days of war were sad enough sometimes.

Fernwoodlee, who had seen Quentin Kennedy, and knew the rumours
concerning him and Flora, observed with annoyance that she was pale
and colourless with ill-concealed interest, as she drew near Lord
Rohallion, who on opening the missive found, to his no small
surprise, that it referred neither to Quentin nor Cosmo, but to
_himself_, and was from Sir Harry Calvert, who wrote, that "by the
direction of his Royal Highness the Field-Marshal
Commanding-in-Chief, he had the pleasure to acquaint him that his
lordship's repeated applications and wishes for command of a brigade
could now be gratified, and that his name would appear in the next
_Gazette_; and that as troops were being assembled in great force at
Shorncliffe camp, his Royal Highness hoped that his lordship would,
within a week, be ready to set out for that place, where his services
were greatly required, and where his proper staff would be selected."

This announcement fell with a startling effect upon Lord and Lady
Rohallion.

"Appointed to a brigade--a brigade for foreign service!  My dear
Reynold, you cannot for a moment think of accepting this command?"
said Lady Winifred, anxiously taking his right hand between her own.

"I applied for it, as you are aware, dearest, repeatedly."

"About the time of the first unhappy expedition to Egypt; but you
have long since relinquished all idea of serving again, and now--now,
Reynold----"

"I am bound to accept it, Winny," said he, with more of sadness than
of his old enthusiasm in his tone.  "I am well up the list of
major-generals," he added, with a faint smile, "and must do something
for promotion.  I may be a field-marshal yet, Winny, and a K.G. to
boot."

Perhaps in his secret heart he would rather have wished that this
command had not been offered him; he felt that he was rather old now,
rather staid and formed in habit, and that he had too long settled
down into the easy tenor of a quiet country life to care for the
hurly-burly and anxiety of leading a brigade--it might ultimately be
a division--in the field; but he knew that honour and duty compelled
him to accept it.

Thus he wrote to the adjutant-general that very night accepting the
command, and again urging that something should be done for his young
protégé, Quentin Kennedy.

The letter left by the mail next morning, and Lord Rohallion prepared
to bid farewell once more to the old mansion of his forefathers, and
to buckle on the same sword that he had drawn on the plains of
Minden, when a stripling ensign, forty-nine years before.

It was with sad forebodings that Lady Rohallion prepared to break up
her quiet and happy household, and bid farewell to friends and
neighbours, for she proposed, in the first instance, to accompany her
dear old husband to Shorncliffe, and Flora, their ward, who could not
be left behind, to the unmistakable dismay of young Fernwoodlee, was
to go with them.

She was the only one who felt any pleasure in the anticipated change
and long journey by post-horses, as it promised at least all that
novelty so charming to a young girl.

Poor Lady Rohallion!  She knew that by her husband's frequently
expressed desire for military employment (parliamentary and
diplomatic matters he detested) he was bound in honour--especially at
a time when all Britain was in arms--to accept the first command
offered him by the Duke of York, his old friend and comrade.  She had
long feared the crisis, but, as time passed on and no appointment
came, she ceased to think of it; but now it had come at last, and
when least expected, and she was about to be subjected to a double
separation, from her husband and her son.

Cut off as Britain was then from the continent, the majority of its
people had few views or sympathies beyond their own fireside or
immediate circle.  The scene of the probable campaign in which
Rohallion would serve, was wild and remote, the people desperate and
lawless; our force in the field small, most pitifully so, when
compared with the masses of the dreaded and then abhorred French.

She could perceive that her courtly old lord vacillated between
sincere sorrow for leaving her and a love for his profession, with a
hope of distinguishing himself and trying his strength and skill
against some of the famous marshals of the new empire--the heroes of
the Italian, German, and Egyptian campaigns--those corporals of le
petit caporal, who had picked up their epaulettes on the barricades
of Paris, or at the foot of the guillotine on which King Louis and
the noblest in France died; for thus were the marshal dukes of the
great emperor viewed by the high-flying aristocracy of the Pitt
administration, in the old fighting days "when George the Third was
king."

Lord Cockburn, in his "Memorials," describes, with happy fidelity, "a
singular race of old Scottish ladies," that have completely passed
away.  "They were," says he, "a delightful set; strong-headed,
warm-hearted, and high-spirited; the fire of their tempers not always
latent; merry even in solitude; very resolute; indifferent about the
modes and habits of the modern world, and adhering to their own ways,
so as to stand out like primitive rocks above ordinary society.
Their prominent qualities of sense, humour, affection, and spirit,
were embodied in curious outsides, for all dressed, and spoke, and
did exactly as they chose; their language, like their habits,
entirely Scottish, but without any other vulgarity than what perfect
naturalness is sometimes taken for."

One of that genuine race was the handsome and stately old Lady
Winifred of Rohallion.

A Scottish lady of the kindly old school, one who in infancy had been
nursed and fondled by warm-hearted and periwigged old gentlemen and
hoopskirted gentlewomen, who boasted that they were the last of the
true old Scots, born when a Stuart was on the throne, and before
their country was sold by the Whigs, and when her Parliament
assembled on the ringing of St. Gileses bell; she who in girlhood had
seen and known many of the gallant and loyal who had dined and drunk
with Kilmarnock and Balmerino, and who had drawn their swords for
James VIII. at Falkirk and Culloden; who treasured in secret the
white rose, and yearly drank to "the king ower the water"--she felt
now that she would be sadly at a loss and strange among English
modern society.  Her local ideas and usefulness, her strong Jacobite
sympathies and loyalty to a dead race of kings, her nervous terror of
democracy and foreigners, might pass for eccentricity; but how could
those among whom she would now be thrown know or understand her
little weakness for the heraldry, genealogy, connexions, and past
glories of the Maxwells of Nithsdale and the Crawfords of Rohallion;
for she knew them to be people who spoke of the late cardinal-duke as
"the dead Pretender;" who voted all that was not English absurd or
vulgar, and who basked in the rays of the star of Brunswick as it
beamed on the breast of "the first gentleman in Europe," the future
George IV.: with her powder and patches, her broad Scottish accent,
and her high-heeled shoes, she felt that she would be, in such an
atmosphere, an anachronism--a fish out of water!

These minor considerations of self, however, were completely merged
or lost eventually in distress at the prospect of being separated
from her husband, and in dread of the perils and hardships he might
have to encounter at the seat of war--at his advanced years, too!

To add to her anxiety, the death-watch had ticked for several nights
in the four-poster of the great old state bedroom, and this devilish
little pediculus wrought the good lady as much alarm as Sir Harry
Calvert's missive from the Horse Guards had done.

Amid all this, Flora's chief thought was, that at Shorncliffe she
would be nearer Quentin Kennedy, by the entire length nearly of
Britain, and as Lord Rohallion was to pass through London, he would
see the Duke of York personally about him and his prospects.

The last night they were to spend in the old castle was a wild, cold,
and bitter one.  The waves of the Firth of Clyde boiled in mountains
of white foam over the Partan Craig, and as Elsie Irvine said, "the
yowls of the sealghs were heard on the wind, just as they were on the
nicht that Quentin was shipwrecked, and a' body kent they were never
heard for nocht."

The tempest roared round the snow-clad promontory on which the old
castle stood, and on this night one of the oldest sycamores in the
avenue was uprooted with a mighty crash by the wind, an omen
decidedly of coming woe.  Black clouds sailed like ghostly ships
across the otherwise clear frosty sky, and in the distance the scud
and the ocean blended together in storm and darkness.

On that night, the _last_ they were to spend in their old home, sleep
scarcely visited the eyes of either Lady Rohallion or her husband.

She was full of melancholy forebodings, tears, and prayers, the
result of her education and temperament, and she was thinking of
Flora's parents, of John Warrender of Ardgour, who fell in Egypt, and
of his widow's broken heart; while in Lord Rohallion's mind, real
regret for the coming separation was mingling with anxieties and
little vanities about how he would handle his brigade in the field,
as he had so long grown "rusty."

As the morning dawned--the morning of a clear and bright December
day, Lady Winifred's spirits rose a little, especially after the sun
burst forth auspiciously from the parting clouds.

The poor quartermaster was heart-broken with the idea of being left
behind; but he had the household to look after, and all the live
stock, including Quentin's terrier and Flora's birds, all of which
she solemnly committed to his care.

On this morning, when they were to set out, trunks, mails, imperials,
and all the usual incumbrances of a long journey were borne forth to
the haunted gate where the carriage stood, with its four horses
pawing the hard frosty ground, and their breath ascending like steam,
in the clear cold air.  Old Jack Andrews limped about, whistling the
point of war, with uncommon vigour, and with a new lightness in his
eye and step, at the prospect of seeing military life again.

All the tenantry of the estate and the fishermen of the hamlet
mustered at the old castle-gate, and the Rohallion volunteers, all in
full uniform, with cocked-hats and pigtails, were there in honour of
the brave old Brigadier and his gentle lady; and there too, were all
the household, from bluff Mr. Spillsby the butler, to John Legate,
the long, lean running-footman, and all looked sad and downhearted.

The dominie had overnight prepared a long Latin address to read on
the occasion, but happily for all concerned, he had left it behind
him; and now his great horn barnacles were obscured and dim, as he
lifted his old three-cornered castor and kissed her ladyship's hand
with profound reverence and affection, and then Miss Flora's, as they
were assisted by Fernwoodlee and the quartermaster into the carriage.

"Farewell, dominie," said the old Lord, as he shook the good man's
hand.  "I'll expect you to write me sometimes, and tell us how all
the folk here and the school bairns are coming on."

"Woe is me, Rohallion! and you are again going to follow the drum!"
he replied, shaking his queue and queer old wig: "it was invented by
Bacchus, who, as Polysenus declares, used it first in the Indian war,
but from the sorrow created by its sound, I verily believe its
inventor to be the devil--the great author of the bagpipe."

"Hush, dominie," said his lordship, laughing, "for here comes Pate of
Maybole."

This was the piper of the barony town, in the burgh livery, who now
appeared; and as the coachman whipped up his horses, the sobs of the
servants were drowned in the skirl with which Pate blew out his bag
to the air of the good Lord Moira's Farewell to Scotland:

  "London's bonnie woods and braes,
    I maun leave them a', lassie,
  For who can thole when Britain's faes,
    Wad gie Britons law, lassie?"

And striding as only a Scottish piper strides and swaggers, he played
before the carriage down the avenue and out upon the high road; while
there was not an eye unmoistened at that time-worn castle gate, as
its old lord and his lady went forth upon their way "to the wars in
the far-awa land."

It was a silent house that night in Rohallion.



CHAPTER XIII.

THE RETREAT.

  "Lords and dukes and noble princes,
    On thy fatal banks were slain;
  Fatal banks that gave to slaughter
    All the pride and flower of Spain.
  Furious press the hostile squadrons--
    Furious he repels their rage;
  Loss of blood at length enfeebles--
    Who can war with thousands wage?"
                          _Old Spanish Ballad._


On the llth of December the division of Sir John Hope quitted Alva
and marched towards Tordesillas.

By this time Sir John Moore had discovered that Bonaparte, abandoning
his project of entering the southern provinces, was on the march to
intercept his retreat towards the sea-coast and Portugal, while
another column was advancing against him from the direction of Burgos.

To frustrate a design that might prove so fatal to his slender army,
Moore was compelled to relinquish all hope of fighting the Duke of
Dalmatia; so, countermanding the order for the advance of his various
divisions, he requested Romana to defend the bridge of
Mansilla-de-los-Mulos, and while he fell back towards the Douro,
ordered all the heavy baggage to be conveyed to Astorga.

On hearing of these movements, Bonaparte exclaimed energetically to
Soult, who related it to Major Charles Napier of the 43rd--

"_Moore is the only general now fit to contend with me; I shall
advance against him in person._"

Marching to his left, Moore crossed the Douro at Toro, to form a
junction with Sir David Baird on the 21st December at Vallada.  On
the day before this, near the magnificent Abbey of Sahagun, nine
hundred French cavalry pressing on, were met by four hundred of ours
under Lord Paget, who repulsed them by one brilliant charge, sabreing
thirty, and taking two hundred and sixty prisoners.

Bonaparte advanced with his main body, a hundred thousand strong, by
four routes, towards Benevente, along roads buried deep in snow,
through which, by force or bribery, he had thousands of Spanish
labourers cutting pathways, for the winter had set in with unusual
rigour; but the division of Sir John Hope, whose cavalry and
artillery suffered much by the loss of their horses, which died fast
of the glanders, entered the town before him on the 24th of the same
month.

The sufferings of the army during this retreat towards the north-west
angle of Spain were very great, and the regimental officers were
compelled to carry their personal effects--at least such as were
absolutely necessary--about with them in bags or knapsacks, for the
baggage animals (carts there were none) died, or were lost by the
way.  All bandsmen, batsmen, servants, and grooms were very properly
turned into the ranks, as Moore had resolved that there should be
available _as many muskets as possible_.  Seven officers had but one
tent, and every mounted officer had to groom and rub down his own
horse: arrangements whereat the grumbling, from the staff
particularly, was deep if not loud.  The rations were also
diminished: but of all the corps none suffered less than the Highland
regiments.  After marching hundreds of miles through snow, rain, and
storm, by roads unchanged since the Moors traversed them, the 79th
and 92nd particularly had never a man on the sick-list, a fact
attributable either to their native hardihood or the serviceable
nature of their costume.

Snow was falling heavily as Hope's division entered the crumbling mud
walls of the small and miserable town of Benevente in Leon, where the
officers and men, irrespective of rank, crowded for shelter into the
houses and the castle, while a line of cavalry picquets with a few
pieces of artillery, held the bridge of Orviegro.

Weary and foot-sore, Quentin, after cleaning his musket, flung
himself on a heap of straw in one of the rooms of that wonderful old
castle which is the residence of the Dukes of Ossuna, and which
Southey, in his letters from Spain, describes as one of the finest
monuments of the age of Spanish chivalry, adding, "we have nothing in
England which approaches to its grandeur.  Berkeley, Raby, even
Warwick and Windsor, are poor fabrics in comparison."

Projecting from a wall, a gigantic arm and hand in armour sustain a
magnificent lamp to light the grand staircase of the castle.

Its open galleries and horse-shoe Saracenic arches, that spring from
fluted and twisted columns of porphyry and granite; its long
aerial-like cloisters, with jasper pillars, jagged arches, and
tessellated floors; its recessed seats, deep niches, and canopied
alcoves, covered with quaint arabesques in scarlet, blue, and gold,
were now crowded by wet, weary, and almost shoeless (certainly
shirtless) infantry, who piled their muskets or heaped up their
knapsacks and camp kettles, without heed, in those noble apartments,
where they smoked and made fires of whatever they could lay hands on;
many a gilded chair became fuel, and pictures by Velasquez, Murillo,
and other eminent painters of the Spanish school, were torn from the
walls, and, with a curse on the Spaniards, rolled up and thrust under
a pot of rice soup.

In fact, the troops were now fast becoming reckless, and everything
that was combustible was destroyed on this occasion, the family
archives of the Dukes of Ossuna alone escaping.

Maddened by cold and hunger, they cared not how they made themselves
comfortable for the night; but with the first peep of dawn, the
report of cannon was heard at the bridge, the bugles sounded the
turn-out, and hundreds of hoarse voices were heard shouting,

"Stand to your arms! turn out!  The enemy are coming on--the
out-picquets are engaged!"

The division got under arms to continue its retreat, which the flank
companies were ordered to cover by forming in front of the town; and
so came in this dreary 25th of December.

"A merry Christmas and a happy new year!" cried Monkton to Quentin,
as the grenadiers of Askerne left the battalion double-quick, and
just in time to witness a very brilliant cavalry encounter.

It was about the hour of nine in the morning, and from the slope on
which Benevente stands, they could see in a little plain below the
bridge of the Orviegro, three squadrons of the Imperial Guard led by
a dashing officer in a furred pelisse, skirmishing with the
out-picquets of the light cavalry, and endeavouring to cross the
river by a ford there.  The red flashing of the carbines on both
sides was incessant; in the clear frosty air the reports rang
sharply, and the figures of the Imperial Light Cavalry, in their
brilliant uniforms, were distinctly visible upon the spotless
background of snow.  No one was hit on either side, however, as the
dragoon is seldom much of a shot.

But suddenly two squadrons of the splendid 10th Hussars, by order of
Lord Paget, and led by Brigadier-General Stewart, defiled out of
Benevente to support the picquets, their loose scarlet pelisses and
plumes waving as they galloped along, and rapidly forming line, they
advanced with a loud hurrah, and keeping their horses well in hand,
lest they should be blown, against the Chasseurs à Cheval of the
Guard, who drew up on the crest of an eminence to receive them.

Many who looked on held their breath, and excitement repressed the
rising cheer as the adverse lines of cavalry met!  There was a
mingled yell and hurrah; the long straight swords of the French on
one side, and the crooked sabres of the 10th on the other, all
uplifted, flashed keenly in the morning sun; then there was a
terrible shock; hussars and chasseurs were all mingled in a wild
tumultuous mass, and on both sides horses and men went down among
bloody and trodden snow; but the French fled at full speed, leaving
the ground strewed with killed and wounded men, and encumbered by
scared horses that rushed about with empty saddles.

Eighty-five French Chasseurs and fifty of our smart Hussars were
lying there dead or writhing in all the agony of sword wounds among
the snow; but with loud cheers the survivors came trotting into
Benevente, bringing with them seventy dismounted prisoners, among
whom was the leader of the French, superbly dressed in a green
uniform that had a profusion of gold and fur trimming upon it.  He
was led forward between two Hussars, who had each his carbine resting
on his thigh.

"Paget," exclaimed Brigadier-General Sir Charles Stewart, hurrying up
at a canter, "allow me to present you with a valuable prisoner.  We
have just had the honour to take Lieutenant-General Lefebre
Desnouettes, commander of the cavalry of the Imperial Guard."

Lord Paget bowed very low to the captive.

Pale, exhausted, and covered with sword-cuts, he was the picture of a
soldier; and his eyes had that keen, bright, almost wolfish
expression, peculiar to those who have recently stared the grim King
of Terrors face to face on the battlefield.  He was led away, and was
soon after presented to Sir John Moore, to whom he spoke with intense
bitterness of his own defeat.

"Bonaparte," said he, "is the minion of fortune; he never forgives
the unfortunate, but ever believes them culpable!"

Moore sought to console him, and presented him with a splendid
oriental scimitar, which Lefebre ever after preserved with gratitude,
and wore in England, whither he was despatched at once in charge of
Captain Wyndham, one of the general's aides-de-camp.

The division continued its retreat by the ruined walls and mouldering
citadel of Astorga, and Villa Franca del Bierzo, and, though many
perished by the way, Quentin Kennedy, endowed by spirit and
enthusiasm rather than bodily strength, bore up manfully amid the
fatigue, the privations, and the horrors of that long and devious
retreat of so many hundred miles, along roads covered with deep snow,
over steep and rugged mountain sierras, through half-frozen rivers,
where the bridges had been broken down or blown up, and by narrow
defiles, followed by an enthusiastic enemy, whose well-victualled
force, outnumbering by three times that of Moore, came on fast and
surely, with flying artillery, lightly-armed dragoons, and pestilent
little Voltigeurs, skirmishing every foot of the way--the sharp
ringing of carbines and the boom of field-pieces being the invariable
close of each day's march, and the prelude to its resumption in the
cold, dark early morning, when the cavalry rear-guard held the
advance of the foe in check, till the jaded and half-slept infantry
pushed on, and on, and on--hopeless, heartless, and in rags, leaving,
en route, in the form of dead and dying men, women, children, and
horses, traces of the havoc that neglect and disaster were making in
the ranks, for now the Spanish authorities omitted utterly to supply
the troops with either billets or rations, or any necessary
provisions.

A junction of Hope's division with the main body of the British army
was effected, however; on the 31st of December, Moore quitted Astorga
with his famine-stricken force, and so hot and fierce was the
pursuit, that on the following day, the first of the new year,
Napoleon entered the little town at the head of eighty thousand horse
and foot, with two hundred pieces of cannon, while many thousand
bayonets more were on the march to join him!

The Emperor, however, went no further than Astorga, for there he left
to Soult--to use his own inflated words--"the glorious mission of
destroying the British--of pursuing them to the point of embarkation,
and driving them into the sea!"

And the state of matters we have described continued until the army
reached Lugo, after a five days' march through a rugged and savage
country.



CHAPTER XIV.

FRESH DISASTERS.

  "Oh, plenteous England! comfort's dwelling-place
  Blest be thy well-fed, glossy, John-Bull face!
  Blest be the land of Aldermanic paunches,
  Rich turtle-soup, and glorious ven'son haunches!
  Inoculated by mad martial ardour,
  Why did I ever quit thy well-stored larder?
  Why, fired with scarlet-fever, in ill time,
  Come here to fight and starve in this accursed clime?"


On this march the army was in arrears of pay, so Quentin's remaining
moidores soon melted away, as he shared them, to the last vintin,
fraternally with his friends and comrades; but long ere the army
reached Lugo, he saw many a strange and startling episode of horror
and suffering.

Moore's troops continued to make forced marches to prevent the foe
from closing on their flanks, and now every day provisions grew
scarcer.

The skies were lowering, and heavy clouds rested on the tops of the
gloomy mountains; the rough, narrow, and wretched roads were
knee-deep in drifted snow; half-famished and half-frozen, the
soldiers became desperate, and, in defiance of Moore's orders,
plundered whatever they could get to satisfy the cravings of nature.

From Astorga to Villa Franca (in the mountain district called the
Bierzo--so lovely in summer), is a route of fully sixty English
miles, through wild and savage mountain tracts and passes, where the
horses failed, as their shoes were worn away; but though there were
plenty of iron-works near Villa Franca, there was no time to re-shoe
them, so every hour saw whole sections of our noble English horses
shot down, lest they should fall into the hands of the pursuing
enemy; and then the dismounted troopers had to trudge on foot, laden
with all their useless trappings.

One of the 3rd Light Dragoons of the German Legion, whose horse had
been shot according to the usage of war, was urged by Major Burgwesel
to go on faster.

"Herr Major," said he, "the game is pretty well played out with me,
and if you expect me to march quicker with all this load, you may as
well shoot me as you have done my poor horse."

"Himmel und Erde, get on, fellow!" shouted the major, with an angry
malediction.

On this, the exasperated dragoon placed a pistol to his mouth and
blew out his brains, to the horror of the stern major.

Now came rain in torrents, and even the baggage had to be dragged
through the melting snow, as the mules and burros perished in scores
by the way.  Then the spare arms were abandoned and the extra
ammunition destroyed; next, knapsacks were cast away occasionally,
and everything that might serve to lighten the burden of the
despairing soldiers, many of whom were found frozen and dead in the
bodegas and cellars of Villa Franca by the French advanced guard.

A mile beyond this place, poor Ensign Pimple (as Monkton used to call
him) gave in, utterly incapable of proceeding further; weeping like a
child, in utter prostration, he sank in exhaustion by the wayside,
and no doubt perished during the night.

After passing Benvibre the French cavalry came up with the long line
of stragglers in the rear, and slashed among them right and left,
treading others under foot as they galloped through, and so stupefied
were some by fatigue and others by intoxication, that they could
neither resist nor seek safety in flight.  Two thousand were taken
prisoners between Astorga and Lugo; a thousand more fled away towards
Portugal; many of these were concealed by the Spaniards, and few were
ever heard of again.

So on and on the army toiled from Villa Franca to Castro up the Monte
del Cebrero, a long and continued ascent, through one of the wildest
districts in Spain, where, in summer, woods of umbrageous oak, alder,
and hazel, with groves of wild pears, cherries, and mulberries, make
the landscape lovely; but now it was wild and desolate; and there, to
add to other misfortunes, the sick and wounded had to be abandoned
among the melting snow.

On the sloping road towards Castro-Gonzalo, Askerne found a poor
rifleman of the old 95th lying on his back, and blowing bells of
blood from his mouth; he had been riddled by canister shot, and all
his limbs were broken.

"Unfortunate fellow," said he, with commiseration: "what can I do for
you?"

"Have me shot, sir--shot dead, for the mercy of God!" was the
terrible reply.

"I looked round," says an officer in one of his letters, "when we had
hardly gained the highest point of those slippery precipices, and saw
the rear of the army winding along the narrow road--I saw the way
marked by the wretched people, who lay on all sides expiring from
fatigue and the severity of the cold; their bodies reddened in spots
the white surface of the ground."

There a Portuguese bullock driver who had been with the British since
the landing of the army, was seen dying amid the snow on his knees,
with his hands clasped in an attitude of prayer before a little
wooden crucifix, a consolation not left to the hundreds of our
soldiers, who were flinging themselves down in utter despair to die,
with curses and bitter imprecations on their lips--curses on the
Spaniards, who, they fancied, had betrayed them.

And there, too, were women and little children!

About nightfall, just as the grenadiers of the Borderers struggled up
the Monte del Cebrero through all the horrible débris that the
columns in front had left behind, they passed several of the sick and
artillery waggons, broken down or abandoned by the wayside.  In these
were many soldiers' wives and sick men dead and frozen!

In one was a woman in labour dying, with her infant, amid the icy
drift; in another a woman already dead, with a wailing infant tugging
at her white cold breast.  The little one was taken by good old
Sergeant-major Calder, who wrapped it in his great-coat, but it died
of cold ere the summit of the mountain was attained.

From one of those covered sick-waggons that lay broken down and
abandoned among the snow and sleet, there came the sound of a strange
wailing song sung by a woman.  This prompted Quentin to leave the
ranks, which were somewhat irregular now, and peep in.  There he
found a soldier of the 25th lying dead, and his wife, with their
child, sitting by his side, in misery.  They formed a touching group!

She was evidently deranged by suffering, terror, and sorrow, and she
was a pretty young woman, too.  She heard not the wailing of the
infant that nestled among the wet straw by her side, but sat with her
husband's head in her lap, and her hollow eyes fixed on vacancy, as
she toyed with his hair, and "crooned" a fragment of an old Scottish
song to a plaintive air, somewhat like that of "My Love's in
Germanie."

  "They say my love is dead,
  Gone to his gory bed,
  They say my love is dead,
        Ayont the sea.
  In the stillness o' the night,
  When the moon is shining bright,
  My true-love's shroud sae white
        Haunteth me,
        Haunteth me!
  My true love's shroud sae white
        Haunteth me!"


"Good heavens, sir," said a soldier, "it is poor Allan Grange, the
sergeant who was broken at Colchester, and his wife, too!  She's
clean demented, puir thing!  Ailie, woman, come awa; the regiment is
moving on."

Quentin too, tried his powers of persuasion, but without avail, and
the stern order of Cosmo, to "Close up--close up, and move on--no
loitering!" together with the distant boom of a French field-piece,
the flash of which came redly through the drift and darkness,
compelled them to leave her.  If she lived she must soon after have
fallen into the hands of the enemy.  At all events, Ailie Grange was
heard of no more.

In one of the many skirmishes with the enemy's light dragoons, a
singular instance of gross treachery occurred at the little village
of Palacios de la Valduerna.  There a sergeant of our 7th Hussars,
belonging to Captain Duckinfield's detachment, vanquished, in single
combat, a French dragoon and took him prisoner.  The Frenchman threw
down his sword, drew off his leather gauntlet, and held out his hand
in token of amity.  Then the sergeant, with the characteristic
generosity of a gallant Englishman, also put forth his right hand;
but inserting his left into his holster, the Frenchman drew a pistol,
blew his captor's wrist to pieces, and killed his horse under him.

Before the poor hussar could rise from under his fallen charger, the
would-be assassin was bayoneted by some of Romana's Spanish soldiers,
who in their rage and hatred, made up a fire and consumed his body to
ashes; after this, in blind vengeance, they somewhat needlessly slew
his horse.

At this part of the disastrous retreat nearly a hundred waggons that
were coming on, laden with shoes and clothes for Romana's Spaniards,
from England, but too late to be of any avail, fell into the hands of
the enemy.

As the column defiled past them, Quentin saw the body of an officer
lying dead under one of the wheels in a pool of blood, snow, and
mire.  A vague recollection, combined with a horrible anxiety, made
him draw near to observe the corpse.

It was that of Warriston! his kind and generous friend, Captain
Richard Warriston, of the Scots Brigade; but "push on--push on," was
the order, and there was no time given for thought, examination, or
inquiry........

On, and on yet! and at last it was found necessary, at Nogales, to
abandon the military chest.  Why its contents were not distributed
among the troops it is difficult to say, unless that time would have
been lost by the process of division.  Two bullock-carts, laden with
twenty-five thousand pounds in dollars, were backed over a lofty
precipice, and fell crashing from the summit among the rocks and snow
beneath; and then as the waggons broke and the casks burst, the broad
silver dollars flew far and wide.

It was hoped that this money would escape the observation of the
French, and so fall into the hands of the Spaniards.  Part was found
by the former, part by the Gallician peasantry, and a Highland
tradition tells us of a thrifty Scots paymaster who contrived to
conceal a cask or two under a certain cork-tree, where he found the
specie all safe when he went back to Spain for it, after Toulouse;
and that he bought therewith a snug little estate on the shore of the
Moray Firth.

At the very time that the bullock-carts with the treasure were cast
over the precipice, by some absurd mistake, Quentin's battalion, with
two pieces of cannon, were engaged with the enemy in order _to
protect it_!

Evening was coming on, and shimmering through the slanting sheet, a
cloud of French cavalry passed along the snowy and miry way, while
the two field guns were ploughing lanes of death through their ranks;
but still with brandished sabres and cries of "Vive la France!  Vive
l'Empereur!" they came on thundering to the attack.

"Square against cavalry!" was now the cry; "square on the grenadiers!"

It was formed double-quick, and a smile of grim joy spread over every
sallow and weather-beaten face as the toil-worn and tattered regiment
made the movement, enclosing many of the wounded foes as well as
friends.  The light company formed the rear face of the square.

Cosmo was undoubtedly brave, for a lofty expression of pride and
defiance spread over his features on beholding the rapidity with
which the square was formed.  Jolly old Middleton drew off his gloves
and stuck them in his belt; he then flourished an enormous sabre, so
rusty and notched in the edge that it was known as "Jock Middleton's
hand-saw," saying--

"I like to use my tools, lads, without mittens; the cat that wore
gloves never caught mice."

The officers dressed the four faces as well as the shattered and
unequal state of the companies could form them now.  Sending a last
discharge of grape plunging into the masses of the foe, the gunners
rushed for shelter behind the wall of bayonets, and now through the
gloom of evening, the wrack, mist, and smoke, on came the French
dragoons like rolling thunder!

As the ground was tolerably open the square was approached on three
faces.

Against one was a brigade of cuirassiers, their brass helmets with
scarlet plumes and brass corslets with elaborate shoulder-belts all
dimmed by rain; opposed to another was the Lancer Regiment of
Napoleon-Louis, the hereditary Duc de Berg, with white plumes and
kalpecks in their busbies; and on the third face came the Light
Dragoons of Ribeaupierre, in pale green lapelled with white and laced
with silver, their tricolors waving above a forest of flashing sabres.

Quentin felt his heart beating wildly as they came on.  In the
square, every eye lit up, every brow was knit, and every lip
compressed; but not a shot was fired until the foe was within
pistol-range, when, from the faces of the square, there opened a
close and disastrous fire, first from the right to the left, and then
it became a wild roar of musketry, the men loading and firing as fast
as they could, while many a pistol and carbine-shot took effect in
their ranks, and Quentin was covered by the blood of a man who was
killed thus by his side.

Yells of death were mingled with shouts of rage and defiance, as
horse and man went down on every hand, the front squadrons swerving
or recoiling madly on the rear, thus making all advance impossible;
steeds reared, plunged, and neighed, their riders groaned, shrieked,
and swore; swords, helmets, shakos, and broken lances were seen
flying into the air, while lancers and cuirassiers, wounded and
dying, were crushed and trodden flat by hoofs and falling horses.

The whole cuirassier brigade became an undistinguishable mass of
confusion and indiscriminate slaughter; but not a horseman came
within sword's point of that steady and invincible square of infantry.

At that moment, when the firing slackened a little, the voice of the
Master of Rohallion was heard.

"Well done, my brave Borderers! kneeling ranks, fire a
volley--ready--present--_fire_!"

It rang like thunder in the winter air, and found a thousand echoes
among the mountains, and ere these died away the ruin of the foe was
complete.  This was the first occasion on which Quentin had fired a
shot in grim earnest, and a thrill passed through his heart as he
pulled the trigger and sent a bullet on its errand, while ignorant of
its effect amid the smoke in front.

Ere the butts were again on the earth in their original position, and
the bristling bayonets were pointed upward, amid the smoke that
rolled around them like a murky curtain, the cavalry were seen in
full flight, leaving a terrible débris of death and bloodshed behind
them on the snow-clad mountain slope.

"The battalion will form quarter-distance column," cried Cosmo, as
coolly as if he was in Colchester again.  Then he ordered the pouches
of the dead and wounded to be emptied, as ammunition was running
short.  The field guns were then limbered up, and once more the weary
retreat was resumed with all speed.

Sergeant Ewen Donaldson, whose leg was shattered by a carbine-ball,
was here left behind, after some of the soldiers had made an effort
to drag him along with them.

"Push on, boys--push on, and never mind me," said the poor fellow;
"before morning I shall be gone to where I'm fast wearin' awa'--the
land o' the leal."

And this, too probably, was the case.

The tender and compassionate heart of Sir John Moore bled at the
misery he beheld hourly on this miserable retreat.  He bitterly
deplored the relaxation of discipline consequent on it, and he never
ceased issuing orders, warm exhortations, cheering addresses, and
stirring appeals to honour and courage, to keep up the spirit of
those under his command; but despair and sullen apathy reigned in
many instances in officers and men alike, while the retreat lasted.
But, with all this, grand and touching instances of humanity were not
wanting to brighten the terrible picture.

An infantry officer, in despair of proceeding further, turned aside
into a thicket of trees, to lie down and die unseen and uncared for;
but there he found a soldier's wife stretched at the point of death,
and, with the last effort of expiring nature, she implored him to
receive and preserve her child.  He did so, and endued with fresh
strength and energy by the trust, he carried the infant on his back,
and it never quitted his care till he reached one of the transports
in the bay of Vigo, after the battle of Corunna.*


* Edinburgh Annual Register.


At a place where the green coats of the 95th dotted the snow, showing
where a skirmish had been, Quentin assisted a rifleman to place one
of his comrades in a waggon that stood near.

"Tom--old fellow," said the sufferer, in a weak voice, for he was
dying with a bullet in his chest, and rustled fatuously among the
damp straw on which they placed him; "I say, Tom--we've long been
comrades."

"Yes, Bill," said the other, in a husky voice, "ever since
Copenhagen."

"Well, when I'm dead, I want you to do summut for me, and I'll give
you all I have in the world.  My kit's wore out, ever so long ago,
but I've three biscuits in my havresack, and you're welcome to them;
give one to poor Pat Riley's widow."

"But wot am I to do for you, Bill?"

"Close my right eye, Tom; dont'ee forget; the cursed French knocked
t'other out at Vimiera."

"Yes, Bill--I was wounded that day, too."

Bill's eye was closed, and the snow and the sods were over him within
an hour after this, and close by Tom sat, munching his legacy, for he
was starving, with his fierce moist eyes fixed on the little mound
where his old comrade lay.



CHAPTER XV.

A SMILE OF FORTUNE.

  "But little; I am arm'd, and well prepared.--
  Give me your hand, Bassanio; fare-you-well!
  Grieve not that I am fallen to this for you;
  For herein Fortune shows herself more kind
  Than is her custom."--_The Merchant of Venice._


No music was heard now on that dreary retreat.  The bagpipes of the
indomitable Highlanders sent up their bold, wild skirl at times upon
the winter blast, showing where the Camerons, the Gordon Highlanders,
or the Black Watch trod bare-knee'd through the snow; but no other
quickstep met the ear; even Leslie's march cheered the Borderers no
more; and many a man among them wished himself with the other
battalions of the corps, broiling in India, or serving anywhere but
in Spain.

To reach their transports and abandon the country by sea, without
risking the slaughter of a useless battle with those whose numbers
were so overwhelming, was, for a time, the sole object of the British
generals.

Disorders usually prevail in a retreating army, and many
circumstances served to augment them on this occasion.  Our soldiers
were enraged by the apparent apathy or treachery of the Spanish
officials, who withheld all supplies; these latter, at the same time
did not conceal that they believed themselves to be abandoned by the
British to the enemy, in whose overwhelming numbers, with true
Spanish obstinacy, they refused to believe.

Perceiving, however, that unless by some vigorous resistance he
crippled his pursuers, a flight by sea would be impossible, Sir John
Moore recalled General Fraser's division from the Vigo road, and on
the 6th of January, after a sharp cavalry encounter at Cacabelos,
where Colbert, a distinguished French general, was killed, he took up
a position near the city of Lugo, on the Minho, in Gallicia, a place
situated on high ground.

So pressed were the cavalry, and so dreadfully had the horses
suffered during the retreat, that on entering Lugo many fell dead
beneath their riders, and others were mercifully shot.  Four hundred
of their carcasses, with bridles, saddles, and holsters on--the
steeds that whilome had been in the ranks of our splendid 7th, 10th,
15th, and 18th Hussars--lay in the market-place and thoroughfares.
There were none of our soldiers who had strength to dig trenches deep
enough to bury them; the Spaniards were too lazy or apathetic for the
work, or cared not to attempt it while the enemy's voltigeurs or
sharpshooters were within sight of their old ruined walls.  Swelling
in the rain, bursting, and putrefying, the bodies lay there, a prey
to herds of devouring dogs, and flocks of carrion birds.

At Lugo the army might have rested for some days, had the bridges of
the now swollen rivers been blown up; but the mines had failed, and
on the 5th of January the pursuing French came in sight in force, and
at last a battle was looked for.

The evening of the 5th proved a very eventful one for the humble
fortunes of our hero, and the _last_ of his service in the ranks of
the King's Own Borderers.

About four in the afternoon, during a partial cessation of the sleet
and rain which had been incessant for so many days, melting the snow
on the mountains and swelling the rivers, Quentin found himself
posted as an advanced sentinel in front of the line of out-picquets,
near the road leading from Lugo to Nogales.  Dark clouds enveloped
the mighty range of mountains in the distance, but from their summits
it was known, by the intelligence of scouts, that the enemy was
descending in force.

A blue patch was visible here and there overhead, through the flying
vapour, and there, already bright and twinkling, a few "sentinel
stars set their watch in the sky."

After the slaughter of the worn or half-dead cavalry horses, all was
still, and now not a sound stirred the air save the tolling of the
cathedral bell in Lugo, or the roar of the Minho, swollen by a
hundred tributaries, and rushing in wild career through an
uncultivated waste of stunted laurel bushes to mingle with the
Atlantic.

That day Quentin had tasted no food save a handful of corn which he
received from Major Middleton, whom he had found fraternally sharing
a feed of it with his now lean and gaunt Rosinante-looking charger,
which he had stabled under a cork-tree and covered with his blanket,
complimenting himself by the old adage that "a merciful man is
merciful to his beast."

Oppressed by the sombre scenery, the drenched and uncultivated waste,
and the gloom of the December evening, Quentin leaned on his musket,
a prey to a fit of intense despondency, and tears almost came to his
eyes as he thought of all the horrors he had witnessed since the day
on which he landed at the bay of Maciera, the campaign he had served
so fruitlessly, and of what was before him on landing, friendlessly,
in England.

Better it was to die in Spain, like poor Warriston, whose dead face,
as he lay with others, mangled and doubtless yet unburied, in that
savage mountain waste, amid the melting snows, came keenly back to
memory now!

From this unpleasant reverie he was suddenly roused by seeing a
mounted officer, muffled in a blue cloak, with a plain unplumed
cocked-hat, riding along the chain of advanced sentinels, questioning
or addressing a few words to each, as if to ascertain that all were
on the alert.

Gradually he came on, his horse, a lean but clean-limbed and active
bay, picking its way among the rough stones and stunted laurel
bushes.  As he drew nearer, Quentin could perceive him to be a
general officer, accompanied, at a little distance, by an orderly
sergeant in the blue, white-faced, and silver-braided uniform of the
18th Hussars.  On his approaching, Quentin "presented arms."

"Walk about," said he, while touching his hat.  This is the usual
response of an officer when ceremony is to be waived; but,
immediately after, perceiving by Quentin's uniform--for the poor
fellow had now parted with his great-coat as well as his blanket, and
in a similar fashion--that he was _not_ a private soldier, he came
close up to him, and said, "You are, I presume, aware that the enemy
is in front?"

"Yes, sir--and more immediately, Ribeaupierre's dragoon brigade and
Lallemand's corps."

"Exactly," replied the other, with a pleasant smile; "I like to find
a young soldier well-informed of the work in hand--that he knows what
he is about, and takes an interest in his profession.  Your regiment
is----"

"The 25th Foot, sir--2nd battalion."

"You are, I see, a volunteer?"

"Yes, sir."

"How long have you served?"

"Nearly since the campaign opened."

"Without promotion, too!"

"And likely to be without it now, I fear."

"It is somewhat unusual for a volunteer to be posted as a sentinel,"
said the other, with a keen glance.

"I go where Colonel Crawford orders me," replied Quentin; "and if
there was much risk, I spared him the trouble by volunteering
readily."

"A young fellow of spirit!  Are you born to a fortune?"

"Fortune!" repeated Quentin, with a start, and in a voice that was
very touching; "alas, sir, I fear that I am born only to _failure_!"

"Failure?" said the other, as his colour deepened.

"Yes, sir--like our expedition to Spain."

The officer seemed much struck by a remark that appeared to coincide
with certain ideas and fears of destiny that were peculiarly his own.
He knitted his brows, and said--

"Young man, you speak very confidently of the fate of 'this
expedition to Spain.'  Do you know what you are talking about?"

"I trust, sir, that I do," replied Quentin, modestly.

"Then, perhaps," said the other, with a smile as he propounded what
he deemed a puzzling question, "you will be good enough to explain
the maxims which guide an expedition by land or sea?"

"I shall try," said Quentin, colouring deeply and seeking to remember
some of the old quartermaster's enthusiastic tutelage.

"Do so."

"There are, I think, four great maxims."

"Yes--at least, and I shall be glad to hear them."

"First, sir, in an armed expedition of any kind, there should always
be secrecy of design, and also, of all preparation.  Second: the
force and the means employed should always be proportionate to the
_end_ to be achieved; (which is not _our_ case here, else we had been
in Madrid to-night and not fugitives in Lugo.)  Third: there is
requisite a complete knowledge of the country for which the
expedition is destined; in that at least our brave Sir John Moore is
unequalled.  Fourth: there is required a commander, who like him has
all the turn of mind which is most adapted for that particular branch
of the war."

"Upon my honour you are a very singular young man," replied the
other, with something between a smile and a frown hovering on his
fair and open countenance.  "You might teach Cæsar himself a lesson;
but before you go any further in your remarks, I think it right to
inform you that _I_ am Lieutenant-General Sir John Moore."

Quentin was silenced and petrified.  He felt sinking with shame at
his own confidence and sudden effrontery, both the offspring of
gloomy disappointment; then he strove to remember all he had said,
and continued to gaze almost stupidly at the worthy general, who
seemed to enjoy the situation and laughed heartily, and said, in a
manner that was winning and reassuring--

"I wish Davie Baird or Lord Paget had been with me to hear all this!"

Mild in face and disposition, though somewhat fierce in temper when a
boy, Sir John Moore possessed a figure that was tall and graceful.
His features were perfectly regular; his eyes were hazel, and his
hair of a rich brown colour.  His whole face was expressive of
cheerfulness and benignity, save at times when a hopeless or
desponding emotion seized his mind.  There was a very perceptible
scar on one of the cheeks, where his face had been traversed by a
bullet when leading on the 92nd at Egmont-op-Zee.

In his holsters he always carried the pistols given to him by the
attainted Earl Marischal, when he was present, as a young subaltern
of the 51st Foot, at the famous reviews of the Prussian army near
Potsdam, together with a pocket edition of Horace bearing the Earl's
autograph; and these he valued highly as relics of that sturdy old
Jacobite, once Scotland's premier peer.

Moore was now in his forty-eighth year, having been born at Glasgow,
in 1761, in a house long known as "Donald's Land," in the
Trongate--an edifice demolished in 1854.  But to resume:--

After enjoying Quentin's confusion for a moment, he asked--

"Are there any other gentlemen volunteers serving with the Borderers?"

"No, sir, myself only."

"Indeed!--what--are you named Kennedy--Quentin Kennedy?"

"Yes, sir," replied Quentin, faintly, and his heart sunk.  ("Oh,"
thought he, "he has heard of that accursed court-martial--who has
not?  It is all over with me now!")

"Have you not seen the last War Office Gazette, which came this
morning from England?"

"No, sir, I am sorry to say that--that--" stammered Quentin, ignorant
of what dereliction of duty might be here inferred; "I only--that
is----"

"Then get a look of it, and there you will find yourself gazetted to
a lieutenancy in the 7th, or Royal Fusiliers.  I congratulate you,
sir--your regiment is at present in England, where I wish we all
were, with honour and safety."

Quentin was overwhelmed by this intimation.

"Oh, sir, are you sure of this?" exclaimed the poor lad, trembling
with many mingled emotions.

"Sure as that I now address you; and if your name be Quentin Kennedy,
serving with the King's Own Borderers--full lieutenant in the corps,
which has _no other_ subalterns.  Now you cannot continue to serve
thus--carrying a musket with the 25th; other work must be found for
you.  When will you be relieved from this post?"

"In a few minutes, sir--my hour is nearly up."

"Then you will take a note from me to Crawford, your colonel," said
Moore; and drawing forth a note book, he rapidly pencilled a note,
tore it out, folded it and addressed it.


"The bearer hereof," it ran, "Mr. Q. Kennedy, having been appointed
by his Majesty to a lieutenancy in the 7th Fusiliers, will serve on
my personal staff, as an extra aide-de-camp, until he can join his
regiment, now in Britain.

"JOHN MOORE, Lieut.-Gen."


"You will show this to Colonel Crawford and to the adjutant-general,
with my compliments.  It will be in orders to-morrow.  Wyndham has
gone to London with poor General Lefebre and the despatches of our
cavalry affairs at Sahagun and Benevente, so I must have your
assistance in his place during this _expedition_," he added,
smilingly, with an emphasis.  "Captain Hardinge will lend you a
horse--I know he has some spare cattle--meet me at my quarters
opposite the cathedral to-morrow morning early; till then good-bye,
Lieutenant Kennedy, and I wish you success!"

Moore drew off his glove, shook Quentin's hand with friendly
cordiality, and rode away at a canter, leaving our sentinel in a very
bewildered state of mind indeed.



CHAPTER XVI.

PIQUE.

  "These hands are brown with toil; that brow is scarred;
  Still must you sweat and swelter in the sun,
  And trudge with feet benumbed the winter snow,
  Nor intermission have until the end.
  Thou canst not draw down fame upon thy head,
  And yet wouldst cling to life!"--ALEXANDER SMITH.


"A lieutenant in the 7th, or Royal Fusiliers!--am I actually so?" was
the question Quentin asked of himself repeatedly.

There could be no doubt about it; the general had said so, and the
Gazette confirmed it, that he, Quentin Kennedy, volunteer with the
25th Foot, had been appointed to that regiment, one of the oldest
corps of the line--a "crack one," too--commanded by General Sir
Alured Clark, G.C.B.  Long known as the _South British Fusiliers_, to
distinguish them from the Scottish corps and the famous Welsh
Fusiliers, armed with the same weapon, the 7th were without officers
of the rank of ensign until a year or two ago; thus, at the time we
refer to, their two battalions had no less than sixty-four
lieutenants.

This sudden promotion, which put him so completely beyond the power
of his rival and enemy, the Master of Rohallion, and which gave him
independence and a position in society too, puzzled Quentin for a
time; but briefly so, as reflection showed him that he must owe it to
the great interest possessed by Lord Rohallion, who, he was aware,
had now traced him to the Borderers; and this, indeed, was the secret
of the whole affair.

And Flora Warrender--she must have seen his appointment in the
Gazette long before it had thus casually met the sharp eye of Sir
John Moore, and could he doubt that she rejoiced at the event?

To be raised at once from a position so subordinate and anomalous, so
unrecognised and so fraught with useless peril as that of a gentleman
volunteer, from the ranks as it were of that army whose dreadful
sufferings he shared and whose many dangers he risked--to be raised
to the rank of an officer in a regiment so distinguished as the Royal
Fusiliers, and to be at once, temporarily though it were, placed on
the general's staff, and beyond the reach of Cosmo's coldness, pique,
and hauteur, was indeed to be independent, and to taste of happiness
supreme!

His heart was full of joy, of enthusiasm, and gratified ambition; but
sincere gratitude and increased regard for the kind and fatherly old
Lord to whom he owed it were not wanting now; and Quentin resolved to
write a letter pouring out his thanks, and expressive of all he felt,
on the first opportunity.  He was right to make the last reserve
mentally, for opportunities for committing one's lucubrations to
paper were sadly wanting now when within musket shot of the French
advanced guard.

He was full of genuine regard for the good and great Sir John Moore,
full of enthusiastic devotion, gratitude, and admiration, too!  How
was it possible that he could feel otherwise?  Apart from the news of
his promotion in life, which must soon have reached him, he blessed
the chance which made his informant the resolute and gallant leader
of the British army!

After obtaining the warm congratulations of those who were his
friends, and who hailed him now as a brother officer (as for old
Middleton he almost wept for joy, and swore to wet the new commission
deeply), most grateful indeed to his heart were the humble but
earnest felicitations of the soldiers, who crowded round him, poor
fellows, all haggard, ragged, and starving though they were, begging
leave to shake his hand, and to wish him all success and prosperity
to the end of his days.  And Quentin felt that such genuine and
heartfelt wishes as theirs were well worth remembering as an
incentive for the future.

But little time was there for joy or loitering now, as the French
were coming on and were again close at hand.

Relieved from the out-picquet on the Nogales road just as the winter
dusk was deepening, he passed through the gloomy streets of Lugo,
where ammunition waggons, unclaimed or abandoned baggage, and dead
horses weltering in pools of dark blood, added greatly to the
confusion of those crowded, ancient, narrow, and decidedly dirty
thoroughfares; which were destitute alike of lamps, pavement, and
police, and were full of holes, puddles, mud, and mire.  There were
sentinels, with bayonets fixed, at the doors of all the wine-shops
and bodegas; yet crowds of famished soldiers loitered about them,
while the dreaded provost-marshal guard, with cord and triangles, and
patrols of horse and foot passed slowly to and fro in every
direction, to enforce that order which the alcalde and his alguazils
considered hopeless.

Quentin soon found, however, where the colonel and colours of the
Borderers were lodged.  It was an old mansion which had once belonged
to the Knights of Santiago, the highest order of chivalry in Spain;
and above its arched door, where two of the colonel's servants were
chatting and smoking--one leisurely polishing a pair of hessian
boots, and the other oiling the harness of his charger--he saw carved
on a large marble block the badge of the order: a sword _gules_, the
hilt powdered with fleurs-de-lis, and the stern motto, _Sanguine
Arabum_.

It happened, though seated over his wine, after such a dinner as the
exigencies of the time enabled him to procure, and though in company
with his old friend the gallant and fashionable Lord Paget, then in
his fortieth year, rehearsing together their gay but somewhat coarse
memories and experiences of Carlton House and the Pavilion, the
Honourable Cosmo was far from being in the best of humours.

A full conviction of the sudden and disastrous turn in the prospects
of the expedition--the army was now only fighting to escape
home--together with the knowledge that on landing in England a horde
of harpies--Jews, lawyers, and tipstaves, were all ready to pounce
upon him, with protested bills, accounts, I.O.U.'s, post-obits,
bonds, and Heaven only knows what more, the result of his Guards'
life and reckless expenditure in London--all this, we say, well nigh
drove him frantic; and Paget's memories of their brilliant past, and
their wild, disreputable orgies with the Prince of Wales and his set,
added stings to the terror with which he viewed the future.

Flora's fair acres might have stood in the gap between him and ruin,
but fate and Quentin Kennedy ordained it should be otherwise.

"Egad, Paget, you see how it is; I've drained the paternal pump
dry--there are bounds to patience, and his lordship will not advance
me another guinea beyond my allowance.  Indeed, I could scarcely
expect it; and thus, I dare not land in England!"

"Let us be afloat before we talk of landing," replied Paget; "it will
be a deuced bad affair for us all if we don't find our transports in
Vigo Bay; and, _entre nous_, I think Moore has some doubts about
them."

"I don't care a straw if undistinguishable ruin should fall upon us
all!"

"Which is certain to be the case, if the said transports are not
there," replied the other, with a yawn.  "But come, Crawford, fill
your glass again; is this champagne some of the stuff we found in
Colbert's baggage?"

"My fate will soon be decided," said the other, pursuing his own
thoughts; "to-morrow, perhaps, for I can see some indication of
taking up a position here, in front of Lugo."

"Yes; but the infernal miners failed at the bridges of the Minho, and
the Sil--the river of gold."

"Thus, I say," continued Cosmo, doggedly, "Paget, old fellow, my fate
will soon be decided!"

"And it is----"

"Death on a Spanish battle-field, or to rot in an English prison!"

"Don't talk so bitterly; once in London again, we shall see what can
be done.  Another glass of this sparkling liquid!--wine, wine, I
say--drown the blue devils in a red sea of it!" exclaimed the gay
Paget.

"Something stronger than wine for me now," said Cosmo, as he filled a
large glass nearly full with undiluted brandy, and drained it; "life
is short, and not very merry here."

"Egad!  I know no place, however, where it is so difficult to live
and so easy to die."

"Right--so easy to die!" added Cosmo, with a strange and sickly smile.

It was at this inauspicious moment that a servant in
uniform--liveries there were none then with the army--brought in
Quentin's name.

"What the devil can this fellow possibly want with me?" said Cosmo,
full of surprise at a circumstance so unusual as a visit from
Quentin; "is he below?"

"Yes, sir."

"What does he wish?"

"To see you, sir," replied the soldier, with a second salute.

"Who is it?" drawled Paget, watching his cigar-smoke curling upward,
and depositing the leg he was destined to leave at Waterloo on a
spare chair.

"That fellow who was tried by a court-martial at Alva de Tormes."

"Tried--ah, I remember, for everything but high treason and
housebreaking, eh?--ha! ha!"

"Yes; but who gave the charges the go-by at racing speed.  Send him
up!"

Quentin entered with a flush on his cheek and a painful beating in
his heart.  He bowed low to General Paget, whom he knew by sight, and
to Cosmo, who responded by a quiet stare, and who, before he was
addressed, said sharply--

"I generally have my eye on you, sir, and I thought that you were
with the outlying picquets in front of the town?"

"I was, Colonel Crawford; but----"

"_Was_--and how does it come to pass that you are relieved, or here
at this time?" asked Cosmo, loftily.

"Because, sir, I am now Lieutenant Kennedy, of the 7th Fusiliers,
serving on the personal staff of Sir John Moore."

On hearing this Paget raised his eyebrows and smiled; but Cosmo
hastily thrust his gold glass into his right eye, and glared at
Quentin through it as he wheeled his chair half round, and surveyed
him with cool insolence from head to foot.

"Are you mad, fellow?" he asked, quietly but earnestly.

"Less so than you, Colonel Crawford," replied Quentin, with
suppressed passion; "I have here to show you a note from the general."

"To show _me_?"

"Yes, sir; because it goes from you direct to the adjutant-general
for insertion in orders."

Cosmo coughed, and very leisurely opened the little note which
Quentin handed to him.

"So, sir," said he, "so far as this scrap of paper imports--and I
know Moore's writing well--he has appointed you an extra
aide-de-camp?"

"He has done me the honour, Colonel Crawford."

"Your health, sir," said Lord Paget, frankly; "I congratulate
you--won't you drink?"

"You might more usefully fill up the time necessary to qualify you
for a staff appointment by serving with some corps of the army."

"The 25th, perhaps?" said Quentin, whose temper Cosmo's cutting
coldness was rapidly bringing to a white heat.

"No, sir," he replied, with one of his insolent smiles, "I did not
mean our friends the Borderers."

"What corps, then?"

"The Belem Rangers; what do you think of them?"

"Crawford!" exclaimed Lord Paget, starting with astonishment, for
this imaginary corps was our general Peninsular term for all
skulkers, malingerers, and others who showed the white feather, by
loitering in the great hospital of Belem, near Lisbon.

Quentin felt all that the studied insult implied; the blood rushed
back upon his aching heart, and he grew very pale.  The conviction
now that his position was _different_, that Cosmo wished by
deliberate insolence to provoke and destroy him, rushed upon his
mind, and gave him coolness and reflection, so he said, quietly--

"I shall not report your kind suggestion to Sir John Moore; but I
presume I may now withdraw?"

"Sir," resumed Cosmo, starting from his chair pale with passion, as
he seemed now to have a legitimate and helpless object on which to
wreak his bitterness of soul--a bitterness all the deeper that it was
now inflamed by wine--"sir, I refer to General Lord Paget if your
bearing has not something of a mutinous sneer in it?"

"My smile might, Colonel Crawford; but not bearing, be assured of
that."

"Sir, what the devil do you mean?  Is it to bandy words with me?  You
hear him, Paget?" said Cosmo, incoherently, and purple alike with
fury and a sense of shame at the exhibition he was making; "you hear
him?"

"I have no intention of insulting you," urged Quentin, anxious only
to begone.

"Insults are never suspected by me, but when I know they are
intended, as I feel they are now.  Even your presence here is an
insult!  Now, sir, do you understand me, and your resource--your
resource--do you understand _that_--eh?"

"For God's sake, Crawford! are you mad?" interposed Lord Paget; "what
the devil is up between you?"

"More than I can tell you, Paget."

"With this mere lad, and you a man of the world!"

"'Sblood!  Yes, with him."

The Master's mad pride had involved him in many quarrels, and he had
paraded more than one man at the back of Montague House, in London,
in the Duke's Walk at Holyrood, and elsewhere--luckless fellows who
had resented his overbearing disposition--so a duel to him was
nothing, and in his baffled pique and ungovernable fury he was now
wicked enough to aim at one.

"Cosmo Crawford," exclaimed Quentin, his dark eyes flashing through
the moisture that filled them, "Master of Rohallion," he added in a
choking voice, "I have too often, as a child, slept on your good old
mother's breast to level a pistol at yours, else, sir--else----"

"Bah!" shouted Cosmo, turning on his heel; "I thought so.  Belem for
ever!"

"To-morrow we may be engaged with the enemy," said Quentin, in the
same broken voice; "I shall be in the field, and mounted too; then
let us see whether you or I ride closest to the bayonets of the
French!"

"Agreed--agreed!" said Cosmo, with stern energy, as his pale eyes,
that shrunk and dilated, filled with more than usual of their old
baleful gleam, and he wrung with savage energy the proffered hand of
Quentin, who hastened away.

"By Jove," said Paget, laughing, as he filled his glass with
champagne, "this same beats cock-fighting!  But what the devil is it
all about?"



CHAPTER XVII.

THE COMBAT OF LUGO.

  "New clamours and new clangours now arise,
  The sound of trumpets mixed with fighting cries,
  With frenzy seized, I run to meet th' alarms,
  Resolved on death, resolved to die in arms.
  But first to gather friends, with them t' oppose,
  If fortune favoured, and repel the foes--
  Spurred by my courage--by my country fired,
  With sense of honour and revenge inspired!"
                                            _Æneis_ ii.


"Whatever may be their misery," says General Napier, "soldiers will
always be found clean at a review and ready at a fight."  The order
to take up a position and form line of battle in front of Lugo had
scarcely been issued, when a change came over the bearing, aspect,
and emotions of the men.  Pale, weary, and exhausted though they
were, vigour and discipline were restored to the ranks, with
confidence and valour!

The stragglers came hurrying in to rejoin the regiments, that they
might share in the battle which was to give them vengeance for the
past, or, it might be, a last relief for the future.  Three fresh
battalions, left by Sir David Baird in his advance to Astorga, had
joined Sir John Moore in rear of Villa Franca, and thus, at Lugo, he
found himself at the head of nineteen thousand hardy and well-tried
men.

Moore's generous kindness to Quentin on this occasion served
completely to obliterate the affair of the preceding evening.  He
soon procured him a horse, and pleased with the modest bearing, the
grateful and earnest desire to serve and deserve, with the enthusiasm
of the young subaltern, he presented him with the sword of General
Colbert, a French officer, (said to be of Scottish descent,) who had
been shot by a rifleman of the 95th at Cazabelos, on the 3rd of
January.

"Take this sabre," said he, "and preserve it alike as the present of
a friend and the weapon of one of France's bravest soldiers.  The
hilt is plain enough; and as for the blade, let the enemy be the best
judges of _that_.  Follow me now to the lines."

That sabre Quentin resolved to treasure, even as he treasured the
ring of Flora Warrender.

Grey day was breaking now, and at that dread time when the troops
were forming, and the morning gun pealed from the old walls of
Lugo--the early hour of a chill winter morning--he knew that she who
loved him so well, all unconscious of his danger, the beloved of his
heart, was lying calmly in her bed at home, asleep, perhaps with a
smile upon her lips, while he was here, far away, face to face and
front to front with Death!

He rode forth with Stanhope, Burrard, Hardinge, Grahame of Lynedoch
(the future hero of Barossa), and others of Moore's brilliant staff,
his young heart beating high with pride and joy, as well it might
with such companions and on such an auspicious day.

"On this ground, gentlemen, unless the enemy advance in great
strength," said Moore, "I shall only be too happy to meet them."

As Quentin passed the 25th moving into position in close column of
subdivisions, many a hand grasped his in hearty greeting, and many a
cap was waved, for the eyes of the whole corps were on him.

"'Tis well," said Moore; "I like that spirit much!  They seem proud
of you, Kennedy, as one of their corps.  Pass the orders, gentlemen,
to the generals of division and brigade to prepare for action."

The staff separated at a gallop.

"Off with the hammer-stalls," was now the command; "uncase
colours--examine flints, priming, and ammunition."

About mid-day, after standing for some hours under arms with their
colours flying and exposed to a keen and biting wind, the British saw
the dark masses of the French appear.  There was no sun shining; thus
no burnished steel flashed from amid their sombre ranks, which
numbered seventeen thousand infantry and four thousand horse, with
fifty guns; and now, all soaked with a drenching rain overnight, they
were deploying into line, while many other columns were pouring
forward in their rear.

Moore's right, chiefly composed of the Guards, was posted on flat and
open ground, flanked by a bend of the Minho.  His centre was among
vineyards and low stone walls.  His left was somewhat thrown back,
resting on the mountains and supported by cavalry.

It was his intention to engage deeply with his right and centre and
bear the enemy on, before he closed up with the left wing, in which
he placed the flower of his troops, including the Highland Regiments,
hoping thus to bring on a decisive battle, and have the French so
handled by the bayonet that he might continue the remainder of the
retreat unmolested.

Further hope than this, alas! he had none.

As the French deployed along the mountain ridge in front of Lugo,
they could not see distinctly either the strength or position of the
British; so Soult advanced with four field guns and some squadrons of
horse under Colonel Lallemand, to feel the way and throw a few shot
at the vineyard walls on speculation.

"Bah!  M. le Maréchal," said Colonel Lallemand, confidently; "they
are all fled, those pestilent English, or 'tis only a rear-guard we
have here."

"I suspect, M. le Colonel, you will find something more than a
rear-guard," replied Soult, as fifteen white puffs of smoke rose up
from the low walls in front, and a dozen or so round cannon-shot came
crashing among their gun-carriages, dismounting two twelve-pounders
and smashing the wheel of a third.

On this Soult drew back his squadrons and made a feint on the right,
while sending a strong column and five guns against the left, where
these fresh regiments were posted.

Coming on with wild halloos, and not a few of them chanting the
"Carmagnole," the French drove in the line of skirmishers, when
Moore, followed now only by Quentin Kennedy, all the rest of his
staff being elsewhere, came galloping along and called upon the left
to "advance."

They were now fairly under fire and fast closing up.  How different
from such work in the present day!  Now we may open a destructive
fusillade at a thousand yards rifle-range, and so fire on for hours;
then, after coming within range with Brown Bess, scarcely three
rounds would be fired, before British and foreign pluck were tested
by the bayonet.

Perceiving that the skirmishers of the Borderers were also falling
back before a peppery cloud of little voltigeurs in light green.

"Mr. Kennedy," said Moore, "ride to the Honourable Colonel
Crawford--tell him to advance at once in line; I will lead on the
regiments here."

Quentin, who was tolerably well mounted, dashed up to where Cosmo,
cold and stern as ever, sat on his horse at the head of the regiment.

"Colonel Crawford," said he, with a profound salute, "it is Sir John
Moore's order that you advance with the bayonet--the whole left wing
is to be thrown forward."

Cosmo's eyes flashed and dilated with anger at having to take an
order from Quentin; he frowned and lingered.

"Did you hear me, Colonel Crawford--that your battalion is to charge?"

"Orders, and from _you_?" said Cosmo, grinding his teeth.

"From Sir John Moore," urged Quentin, breathlessly.

Now there is at times a wild impulse which seizes the heart of man
and will make him set, it may be, the fate of all his future--it may
be life itself, upon the issue of a single chance; and such a daring
impulse now fired the soul of Quentin.

"Twenty-fifth," he exclaimed, brandishing his sabre, "you are to
advance--prepare to charge."

"Dare you give orders here?" cried Cosmo, hoarse with passion, and
scarcely knowing what he said; "I follow none--let all who dare
follow me.  Rohallion leads, but follows none."

"Come on then _together_."

"Forward--double quick--charge!" they cried together with their
horses neck and neck rushing onward, while the battalion, with a loud
hurrah, fell upon the enemy, bayoneting the skirmishers and closing
on the main body.

"Bravo, Kennedy!" cried old Middleton, waving his rusty sabre; "I
wish Dick Warriston was here to see you to-day.  It's a proud man
he'd be, for dearly he loved you, lad.  Whoop! here we are right on
the top of the vagabonds," he added, as the front rank of a
sallow-visaged, grimly-bearded, grey-coated French column broke in
disorder and gave way before the furious advance of the Borderers,
whose two field officers were at that moment unhorsed.

Middleton's charger received a ball in its counter and he had a
narrow escape from another, which buried itself in a great old silver
hunting-watch which he wore in his fob, and was known as the
"regimental clock."  Quentin perceived him scrambling up, however,
unhurt, just as he had hurried to the assistance of Cosmo, who, some
twenty yards in front of the corps, had been knocked from his saddle
in the mêlée by two Frenchmen, who had their muskets withdrawn,
bayonets fixed, and butts upwards, to pin him to the earth on which
he lay helpless.

Dashing spurs into his horse, Quentin rushed upon one, and rode him
right down, at the same moment burying his sabre in the body of the
other.  The first voltigeur was only stunned; but the second fell,
wallowing in blood.

Quentin dragged Cosmo up, and assisted him to remount.

"I thank Heaven, sir," said he; "I was just in time to save your
life."

"From any other hands than yours it had been welcome," said he,
haughtily; "however, I thank you.  Sound, bugler, to halt, and
re-form on the colours!"

As Quentin rode away, the proud consciousness in his heart, that he
had returned great good for great evil, gave place to another.  He
saw the second Frenchman rolling in blood on the ground, and
clutching the grass in his agony.  Then a sensation of deadly
sickness came over his destroyer's heart--a sensation that he could
neither analyse nor describe.  So he spurred madly toward the extreme
left, where Sir John Moore by accident found himself in front of his
old regiment, the 51st, in which he had served as ensign.

With a voice and face alike expressive of animation, he waved his
cocked-hat and called upon them as his old comrades to advance to the
charge.  At that moment the light company of the 76th set the
example, and the whole left wing rushed furiously on the French with
the bayonet.  There was a dreadful yell and shock; scores of men
tumbled over each other, many never to rise again; the butt-end was
freely used, and in a minute or less, the French attack was routed,
leaving four hundred dead, dotting all the slope.  In the front rank
of the 51st, Brigade-Major David Roberts engaged a French officer
hand to hand and slew him; but the major's sword-arm was shattered by
two bullets fired by two French soldiers, who were instantly
bayoneted by an Irishman of the 51st, named Connor.  He killed a few
more, while his hand was in, for which he was promoted on the spot.

After this Soult made no further attack, and thus it became apparent
to Moore, that the wary and skilful old veteran was only waiting
until Laborde's division, which was in the rear, should come up,
together with a portion of the sixth corps, which was marching by the
way of Val des Orres.

All the next day the two armies remained embattled in sight of each
other, almost without firing a shot--Soult waiting and Moore
watching--the foe coming on hourly in fresh force, till "the darkness
fell, and with it the English general's hope to engage his enemy on
equal terms."

Quentin spent the evening of that anxious day in the bivouac of his
old friends the Borderers, who were sharing as usual the contents of
their havresacks and canteens, and congratulating each other on
escapes, for save a few contusions none had been hit, and none were
absent save Monkton, who was stationed with a picquet of twenty men
at the bend of the Minho.  Before and after an action, there is an
effect that remains for a time on the minds and manner of both
officers and men.  The former show more kindness and suavity to the
latter, and generally the latter to each other.  There is more
kindness, less silly banter, more quietness and seriousness, and the
oath is seldom heard, even on the tongue of a fool.  It may be, that
all have felt eternity nearer them than usual, and yet in time of
war, the soldier is face to face with it daily.

Large fires were lighted all along the British line, and in their
glare, the piles of arms were seen to flash and glitter, while for
warmth, the weary soldiers lay beside them in close ranks on the damp
earth.

"A plucky thing that was of yours to-day, Kennedy," said Middleton,
"sabreing the voltigeur and remounting the colonel.  You left _me_,
your old friend, to shift for myself, however."

"I saw you were in no danger, major," said Quentin, with some
confusion; "and being independent now of Crawford, I wished--I
wished----"

"To heap ashes on his head; I fear I am not generous enough to have
acted as you did, and marred a step in the regiment."

"A shot grazed my cap _here_," said a captain named Drummond;
"another inch, and there had been a company vacant."

"I wonder what the devil Moore is loitering here for?" asked some one.

"Kennedy's on the staff now; he ought to know the secrets of the
bureau," said Colville.

"Has anything oozed out, Quentin?" asked Askerne.

"He can tell us that we'll attack the French position about daybreak,
before Loison, Laborde, or Ney can join," said Colyear, laughing.

"Ney is at Villa Franca," added Captain Winton, a grave and
thoughtful officer (who fought a duel at Merida).  "I suspect Moore
remains here, in expectation of being attacked _before_ these
reinforcements come up."

"Now would be the time to fall back in the night towards Vigo, and
take up a position to cover the embarkation," said Askerne.

"Right, Rowland," responded Quentin; "we are only able to fight one
battle, and desperation will make us do so well.  And it is not meant
that after winning a battle we should enter Castile again with a
handful of jaded men, and not an ally to aid us between Corunna and
the ridges of the Sierra Morena.  I heard Moore himself say this."

"Who comes here?" they heard a sentinel challenge at a distance.

"What comes here would be more grammatical, my friend," replied a
dolorous voice which they knew, as four soldiers appeared, half
supporting and half carrying an officer.

"What is all that?" asked Middleton.

"The mangled remains of William Monkton, esquire, lieutenant, 25th
Foot," replied that personage, as the soldiers laid him on the turf
near the watchfire.

"What is the matter, Willie? are you wounded?" asked Askerne, putting
a canteen of grog to the sufferer's mouth.

"I should think so!  a devil of a runaway horse from the enemy's
lines came smash over me.  I say, Doctor Salts-and-senna," he added
to the assistant surgeon, who had joined the group; "I am not past
your skill, I hope?"

"Why, Monkton, you haven't even a bone broken," said the doctor, half
angrily, as he rapidly felt him all over; "you are sadly bruised,
though, and will have to ride, if we continue the retreat."

At that moment Hardinge galloped up to Cosmo, who was sitting on a
fallen tree, cloaked and alone, near his horse, for his officers
seldom cared to join him, or he to join them.

"Colonel Crawford," said he, hurriedly, but loud enough to be heard
by all, "the whole line is to fall instantly back towards Corunna by
a forced night march.  All the fires are to be kept brightly burning
to deceive the enemy, and all movements will be made left about, to
prevent the clashing of the pouches being heard.  Move in silence, as
we must completely mask our retreat.  Mr. Kennedy, you will be so
good as take these orders without delay along the line, and desire
the 51st, the 76th, and the cavalry of the left flank, to fall back
and be off, without sound of bugle.  Thirty-five miles in our rear,
the bridge of Betanzos is being undermined; that point once passed,
and the bridge blown up, we shall be safe!"

It was indeed time to fall back.  Soult's first reinforcements had
come up in overwhelming force, and in the stores of Lugo there was
not bread for _one_ more day's subsistence.  The troops were exhorted
by Moore to keep order and "to make a great exertion, which he
trusted would be the _last_ required of them."

At ten o'clock the march began.

In rear of the position the country was encumbered by intricate lanes
and stone walls; but officers who had examined all the avenues were
selected to guide the columns, and just as a dreadful storm of wind
and rain, mixed with icy sleet, burst forth upon that devoted army,
the rearward march began, and when the dull January morning stole
slowly in, save a few wretched, barefooted, and worn-out stragglers,
nothing remained of the British position in front of Lugo but the
drenched and soddened dead bodies of those who had fallen in the
conflict, and the smouldering ashes of the long line of watch-fires,
that extended from the mountains towards the bend of the Minho.



CHAPTER XVIII.

A WARNING.

              "Soft; I did but dream.
  O, coward conscience, how dost thou afflict me!
  The lights burn blue.  It is now dead midnight,
  Cold fearful drops stand on my trembling flesh.
  What do I fear?  Myself? there's none else by."
                                    _Richard III._


Sir John Moore and General Paget, with the cavalry, covered the
retreat; the former ordered several small bridges to be destroyed to
check the enemy's advance; but such was the inefficiency of the
engineer force, that in every instance the mines _failed_.  The rain,
the wind, and the sleet continued; more soldiers perished by the way,
and more stragglers were taken or sabred by the enemy's light horse;
then again demoralization and despair pervaded the ranks.  So
numerous did the stragglers of all corps become, that more than once
they found themselves strong enough to face about and check the
cavalry of Lallemand and Ribeaupierre.  The Guards, Artillery, and
Highlanders alone preserved their discipline.

So great was the fatigue endured by the troops, that, on the evening
of the 10th, when the 3rd battalion of the Royal Scots entered
Betanzos, it mustered, under the colours, nine officers, three
sergeants, and _three_ privates; "all the rest had dropped on the
roads, and many did not rejoin for three days."

At this place, which is a village at the foot of a hill, where the
Mandeo was crossed by a wooden bridge, on which the engineers were
hard at work, they were attacked by Ribeaupierre's dragoons, who,
however, were repulsed by the 23th Regiment; the bridge was
destroyed, and its beams and planks hurled into the swollen stream,
which swept them away to the Gulf of Ferrol.

And here a party of straggling invalids, exhausted by fatigue, were
closely pressed by the French cavalry; a Sergeant Newman, of the 2nd
battalion of the 43rd, who was himself nearly worn out, rallied them
with his pike, and gradually collected four hundred men of all
regiments.  With great presence of mind, he formed those poor fellows
into subdivisions, and made them fire and retire by sections, each
re-forming in rear of the others, so that he most effectually covered
the retreat of the disabled men who covered all that fearful
road--conduct so spirited that he was publicly thanked by Generals
Fraser and Fane.

The destruction of the bridge more decidedly secured the retreat; but
more men perished between Betanzos and Lugo than anywhere else, since
that rearward march began.  Moore, by his energy, massed the army,
now reduced to fourteen thousand infantry, which, on the morning of
the llth January, fell back on Corunna, under his immediate and
personal superintendence.

"Stanhope," said he to his favourite aide-de-camp, who was almost
ever by his side, "we are now within a few miles of Corunna; ride
forward with me, as I am all anxiety to see if our fleet is in the
bay--Kennedy will accompany us."

Quentin bowed, put spurs to his horse, and quitting Paget's cavalry
rearguard together, they rode rapidly along the line of march to the
front.

They soon reached the heights of Corunna, and saw the town beneath
them about four miles distant; then a sad expression stole over
Moore's handsome face, but no exclamation escaped him.

Not a ship was visible in the Bays of Orsan or Betanzos, nor in the
harbour of the town; the Roads of Ferrol and all the expanse of water
were open and empty!

Fortune was against him and his army, for contrary winds detained the
fleet of men-of-war and transports at Vigo, a hundred and twenty
miles distant by sea.

The morning was sunny, and Corunna on its fortified peninsula--the
_Corun_, or "tongue of land" of the Celts--was seen distinctly, with
all its strong bastions and gothic spires; its almost land-locked
harbour, guarded by the castles of San Martino and Santa Cruz, with
the flag of King Ferdinand VII. flying on the fort of San Antonio
(which crowns a high and insular rock), and on the Pharos of Hercules.

For Sir John Moore there was nothing left now but to prepare to
defend the position in front of the town till the fleet should come
round.  He quartered his army in Corunna and its suburbs; the reserve
he posted at El Burgo, on the river Mero, the bridge of which he
destroyed.

He also sent an engineer officer with a party of sappers to blow up
the bridge of Cambria.  Some delay took place in the ignition of the
mine, and he despatched Quentin Kennedy to the officer with an angry
expostulation.

Mortified by repeated failures elsewhere during the retreat, the
officer was anxious to perform this duty effectually.  He approached
the mine to examine it, and at that moment it exploded!

Quentin felt the earth shake beneath his feet; the arch of the bridge
sprung upward like a huge lid; a column of dark earth, stones, and
dust, spouted into the air to descend in ruins, bringing with them
the mutilated fragments of the poor engineer officer, who was
literally blown to pieces; but this was a mere squib when compared
with the explosion of two magazines containing four thousand casks of
powder, which were blown up on the 13th, to prevent them from falling
into the hands of the enemy.  On this occasion, says an eye-witness,
"there ensued a crash like the bursting forth of a volcano; the earth
trembled for miles, the rocks were torn from their bases, and the
agitated waters rolled the vessels as in a storm; a vast column of
smoke and dust, shooting out fiery sparks from its sides, arose
perpendicularly and slowly to a great height, and then a shower of
stones and fragments of all kinds bursting out of it with a roaring
sound, killed several persons who remained too near the spot.  A
stillness, only interrupted by the lashing of the waves on the shore,
succeeded, and the business of the war went on."

All this powder had been sent from England and left there, by the
red-tapists of the time, to be destroyed thus, while more than once
the armies of Britain and Spain had been before the enemy with their
pouches empty!

In Corunna, the jaded British had now breathing time, but the
exulting French were still pouring on.  Some of Moore's staff
suggested that he should send a flag of truce to Soult and negotiate
for permission to embark unmolested--a suggestion which his undaunted
heart rejected with scorn and anger.

"I rely on my own powers," said he, "for defying the enemy, and
extricating with honour my troops from their perilous position."

Food, shelter, and rest restored vigour, and force of habit brought
discipline back to the ranks; fresh ammunition was served out, and in
many instances the men were supplied with new firelocks in lieu of
those rusted and worn by the weather during the retreat; but hearty
were the cheers that rung in Corunna when, on the evening of the
14th, the fleet of transports from Vigo were seen bearing slowly into
the harbour, under full sail, and coming each in succession to
anchor.  At the same time, however, an orderly, sent by Sir David
Baird, came spurring in hot haste to announce that the French had
repaired the bridge of El Burgo, and that their cavalry and artillery
were crossing the Mero, a few miles from Corunna.

With the rest of the staff, Quentin passed all that night in his
saddle, riding between the town and beach with orders and
instructions, for, under cover of the friendly darkness, the whole of
the women and children, sick and wounded, dismounted dragoons, all
the best horses--the useless were shot on the beach--and fifty-two
pieces of cannon were embarked; eleven six-pounders and one field
howitzer being only retained for immediate service.

"Hardinge," said Moore, as his staff rode into the upper town, "you
will ride over to Sir David Baird; you, Major Colborne, to Lord
Paget; and you, Kennedy, to General Leith, to say, that at daybreak,
_if the French do not move_, they are to fall back with their corps
for instant embarkation."

And with these welcome orders, the three aides-de-camp separated at
full speed.

On this night of anxiety and bustle, the Master of Rohallion remained
idly in his billet, a pretty villa, the windows of which faced the
little bay of Orsan, with the suburb of the Pescadera extending from
its garden on the west towards the mainland.

Paget and some other friends of his, after seeing their sound horses
embarked and the useless shot, had supped with him.  No one expected
any engagement to take place now; they made light of past sorrows,
spoke laughingly of the amusements that awaited them at home, and
drank deeply.

Any momentary emotion of gratitude felt by Cosmo for the noble manner
in which young Kennedy saved his life at Lugo was completely
forgotten now, all the recollection of that event being completely
merged in a whirlwind of rage at the aide-de-camp for having taunted
him to the charge, and for actually daring to lead on the battalion
in the face of so many superior officers!

Cosmo had never wearied of descanting on this military enormity, and
all night long, as he became inflamed by what he imbibed, he
consulted with Paget, Burrard, and others, as to whether he should
call Kennedy out or bring him before a court-martial again.

The former mode of proceeding at Alva having failed "to smash him,"
they were averse to another, and all were of opinion that for the
latter course Cosmo had allowed too many days to elapse.

"Trouble your head no more about it," said Paget, while playing with
the tassels of his gold sash; "we'll laugh the affair over at
Brighton in a few days or so.  Soothe your mind, meantime, by the
study of these classic frescoes.  I wonder who the devil decorated
this villa!"

"Cupid and Psyche," said Burrard, who had been adding a few
decorations, such as beards and tails, with a burnt cork; "Pyramus
and Thisbe; and, by Jove, the story of Leda!"

"Egad! such lively imaginations and odd propensities those pagan
fellows had!  Au revoir, Crawford; we'll have the _générale_ beaten
for the last time on Spanish ground to-morrow, and then hey for the
high road to Old England!" added the gay hussar, who, before six
months were past, figured in an elopement, a duel, and damages to the
tune of twenty thousand pounds--an affair that made more noise in the
world of fashion than even the Spanish campaign.

Cosmo was at last alone, and though he mixed a glass of brandy with a
goblet of champagne, he felt strange and sad thoughts stealing over
him.

He was hot and flushed, and his heart beat tumultuously and
anxiously, he knew not why.  He threw open the sash of one of the
lofty windows, which were divided in lattice-fashion from the ceiling
to the floor, and looked out upon the night.

It was silent, clear, and starry, and not a sound broke the calm
stillness, save the chafing of the waves on the rocks that bordered
the bay.

The snow had melted, and the garden of the villa being thickly
planted with evergreens, looked quite unlike a winter one.

Cosmo's brain, at least his whole nervous system, seemed to have
received a shock by that fall from his horse at Lugo.  He was
restless, feverish, and anxious, without knowing why; for being brave
as man could be, he had no fear for the morrow, and really cared very
little whether a battle was fought or not.

"What is this that is stealing over me--can it be illness?" he asked
of himself.

Thoughts and memories of home, his family, and many an old and once
tender association that he had long forgotten were stealing over him
now, together with an uncontrollable sadness and depression of mind:
his father's cheerful voice, his mother's loving face, came vividly
to recollection, with emotions of tenderness for which he could not
account--emotions which he strove to repress as unnatural to him, and
which actually provoked him, by the strange pertinacity with which
they thrust themselves upon his fancy.

"Pshaw!" said he, "that deuced tumble in front of the enemy has
unmanned me--and that fellow, too!  Confound him," he muttered
through his clenched teeth, "I hate him!"

At that moment the great bell of the citadel tolled the hour of
three.  He arose and stepped out into the garden.  The last note of
that deep and full but distant bell, yet vibrated in the stilly air;
the stars were reflected in the dark waters of the bay, and the light
that shone in the great Pharos of Hercules, three hundred feet above
it, as it revolved slowly on its ancient tower, cast tremulous rays
at regular intervals far across the sea on one side and the inlet of
Orsan on the other.

The ocean breeze came gratefully to the flushed brow of Cosmo, who
suddenly perceived near him a man in a strange uniform.

He stood in the centre of the garden walk at a short distance from
the open window, his figure being clearly defined against the starry
sky beyond, and by a ray of light which shone from the room Cosmo
could perceive that his dress was scarlet.

Supposing he was some straggler or other man who should be in
quarters, Crawford, whose step was somewhat unsteady, walked boldly
up to the tall stranger, who remained silent and immovable.

He wore an old-fashioned flowing red coat without a collar, but
having deep cuffs, all profusely laced; a large brigadier wig and
three-cornered hat, sleeve ruffles, and a long slender sword, and he
stood with his right hand firmly planted on a walking cane.  His
bearing was noble and lofty; his long, pale, and handsome features,
in which Cosmo recognised a startling likeness of _his own_, wore a
deathlike hue, and his eyes were sad and stony in expression.

Cosmo Crawford attempted to speak, but the words failed on his lips;
he felt the hair bristle on his scalp, and a thrill of terror pass
all over him as the figure, phantom, fancy, or whatever it was,
pointed with its thin white hand to _the plain before Corunna_, and
then the whole outline began to fade, the stars shone through it, and
it seemed to melt away into space!

An icy horror came over Cosmo, and his soul trembled as he remembered
the bugbear of his boyhood, the story of the haunted gate at
Rohallion, and the wraith of his uncle John the Master, who had been
slain by the side of Cornwallis in America.  He rushed back to the
room and flung himself panting on a sofa.

Then with a furious oath at his own timidity, folly, or fancy, he
issued boldly into the garden again, but nothing was there save the
laurel bushes that bordered the lonely walk where he had seen that
wondrous and fantastic dream.

All seemed still--horribly so--all save the beating of his heart and
the rustling of the regimental colours, which the night wind stirred,
and which, in virtue of his rank, were always lodged in his apartment.

"_Was that a warning?_--bah!  And the cup of wine!" he exclaimed.
"By this time to-morrow night," he reflected, "I may have been again
in battle.  I may be safe and scatheless, or dreadfully mutilated and
beggared for life, or by this hour--dreadful thought, I may be in
eternity!  I may have learned the secret of life and death, of
existence and extinction, and this body may be lying stark, stripped,
and bloody, with its glazed eyes fixed on the stars of heaven!  Bah!
another glass of wine, then!"

Cosmo slept but little that night, and it was with a stern and gloomy
foreboding of evil that he saw the day dawn stealing over the dark
grey sea and the lofty citadel of Corunna.



CHAPTER XIX.

THE BATTLE OF CORUNNA.

  "Marked you yon moving mass, the dark array
  Of yon deep column wind its sullen way?
  Low o'er its barded brow, the plumed boast,
  Glittering and gay, of France's wayward host,
  With gallant bearing wings its venturous flight,
  Cowers o'er its kindred bands, and waves them to the fight."
                                        LORD GRENVILLE.


The army was now rid of every incumbrance, and all was prepared for
the withdrawal of the fighting men as soon as darkness should again
set in, and four o'clock in the afternoon of the 16th was the time
fixed by Moore for doing so; but lo! at two o'clock on that anxious
day a messenger came from Sir John Hope to state that the whole
French army, then in position on the heights above Corunna, was
getting under arms--that a general movement was taking place along
the entire line, twenty thousand strong!

"Stand to your arms--unpile, unpile!" was the cry from right to left.

Long ere this, the whole British army had been in position.

Sir David Baird held the right with his division, while Sir John
Hope's was formed across the main road, with its left towards the
Mero river; but the whole of this combined line was exposed to, and
almost enfiladed by, a brigade of French guns posted on the rocks
above the little village of Elvina.

Fraser's division remained before the gates of Corunna to watch the
coast road, and be prepared to advance on any point.

But all the advantage, in strength of position, of horse, foot, and
artillery, was in favour of the enemy.  The only cavalry in the field
with Moore were _forty_ troopers of the 15th Hussars, under the
command of a lieutenant named Knight.

Opposed to Hope and Baird's slender line were the heavy divisions of
Delaborde, Merle, and Merniet, while the cavalry of the French left,
under De Lahausaye, Lorge, Franceschi, Ribeaupierre, and others, were
thrown forward, almost in echelon and in heavy columns, along the
whole British right, hemming them in between the Mero and the harbour
of Corunna, and menacing even the rear so far as San Cristoval, a
mile beyond Sir David Baird, whom, however, Fraser and Lord Paget
covered.

Joy sparkled in Moore's eyes as he rode along the line at the head of
his staff, and to Colonel Graham of Balgowan he expressed his regret
that "the lateness of the hour and the shortness of the evening would
prevent them from profiting by the victory which he confidently
anticipated."

The afternoon was dull and sunless; grey clouds covered all the
louring sky; the sea towards the offing looked black and stormy, and
the ramparts of Corunna, washed by the white waves from the west,
seemed hard, sombre, and gloomy; but the British were in high spirits
and full of hope at the prospect of giving a graceful and a glorious
close to this inauspicious campaign.

Through Moore's telescope, which he lent him, Quentin swept the
French lines.  He could see the masses of the Old Guard in their tall
grenadier caps, grey great-coats and enormous scarlet epaulettes;
then the ordinary infantry of the line, in their short-waisted blue
coatees and wide scarlet trousers, advancing in three dense columns
along the heights towards the British position.  He could see the
guns being unlimbered and prepared for service on the ridge of rock
that covered the flank of the infantry; and he could also see the
cavalry of the left; the cuirassiers of Lahausaye in helmets and
corslets of brass, with flowing scarlet plumes and straight swords of
great length; the chasseurs of Lorge and Ribeaupierre, in light
green, with their horse-hair plumes all floating like a sea of red
and white; then the picturesque column of Franceschi, in which were a
corps of Polish lancers, with all their tricoloured bannerols
fluttering; and some of the Mamelukes of the Imperial Guard, with
white turbans and crosses of gold, all brandishing their crooked
sabres and loading the heavy air with uncouth and tumultuous cries.

On the other hand were the cool and silent British infantry; steady
and still they stood in their solid ranks, their arms loaded, primed,
and "ordered," the bayonets fixed and colours flying; and no sound
was heard along all their line, save when the pipers of the Black
Watch, the 92nd, or some other Scottish regiment, played loud, in
defiance of the advancing foe, some historical or traditionary air of
the clan or tribe from whence its name was taken or its ranks were
filled.

To the 42nd, with the 4th and 50th, was entrusted the defence of the
extreme right, the weakest point of the line, and on _their
maintenance of which_ the safety and honour of the army rested.

As Quentin passed his old battalion in Hope's division on the road
that led from Aris to Corunna, he saluted Cosmo, but received no
response.  Grim as Ajax, the Master was advancing with his eyes fixed
on the enemy and his left hand clutching his gathered reins.  At that
moment perhaps, he thought less of the horrid dream of
yesternight--for a dream he assuredly deemed it--than of the ruinous
bonds, the crushing mortgages, the post-obits, and secret loans at
fifty and sixty per cent., that a French bullet might that day close,
together with his own existence, and he actually felt a species of
grim satisfaction that thereby the crew of money-lenders would be
outwitted.

"This is a day that will live in history, major," said Quentin, as he
passed jolly old Middleton, in rear of the corps, trotting his
barrel-bellied cob, an animal of grave and solemn deportment.

"Likely enough, lad," replied the other; "but I've seen too many of
these historical days now, and I would sell cheaply alike my share in
them, with the chance of being honourably mentioned by some future
Hume or Smollett."

"So, Monkton, you've recovered your Lugo mishap."

"Quite, Kennedy," replied that individual, whom he overtook marching
on the left flank of his company; "never felt jollier in my
life--breakfasted about twelve to-day with Middleton and Colville on
mulled claret dashed with old brandy.  So we are going to engage at
last!  Well, I hope we shall polish off old Johnny Soult, and get on
board betimes--then ho, for Old England!"

"There, gentlemen, is the first gun!" exclaimed Rowland Askerne, with
his eyes full of animation, as he pointed with his sword to a
field-piece that flashed on the rocks above Elvina.  Then a 12-pound
shot hummed harmlessly through the air along the whole line of
Baird's division.

"Tyrol, tra la, la lira!" sang the reckless Monkton; "this begins the
game in earnest!"

"At such a time how can you be so thoughtless, Willie?" said Askerne,
with some asperity; and now, from the great French battery on the
rocks, the shot and shell fell thick and fast upon the British line,
while, led by the Duke of Dalmatia in person, the three solid columns
of Delaborde, Neale, and Merniet, descended with yells to the
assault, tricolours waving, swords flashing, and eagles brandished.

A cloud of skirmishers preceded them, and the white puffs of smoke
that spirted from among the underwood, the low dykes, hedgerows and
laurel bushes, marked where they nestled and took quiet "pot shots"
at the old 95th, and other British sharp-shooters, who fell back in
disorder, as the light six-pounders failed to protect them against
the French heavy guns, which swept Moore's line to the centre, with
round shot, grape, and canister.

From his master in the art of war, Sir Ralph Abercrombie, Moore had
learned that the presence of a commander is always most useful near
that point at which the greatest struggle is likely to occur; thus he
remained near Lord Bentinck's brigade, and close to the 42nd, on the
extreme right, and there Quentin and his staff accompanied him.

The French left carried the village of Elvina, and dividing into two
great masses, one poured on against Baird's front, and the other
assailed his right under cover of their gun battery, while their
right assailed Hope at the pretty hamlet of Palavia Abaxo.  And now
the roar and carnage of the battle became general all over the field;
men were falling fast on every side, "and human lives were lavished
everywhere;" Baird's left arm was shattered by a grape-shot, and he
was taken from the front to have it amputated; Middleton was struck
about the same time, in the left side.

Lifting his cocked-hat, and bowing almost to his holsters, while a
cloud of hair-powder flew about his head, this fine old soldier said,
faintly, to the Master of Rohallion--

"I am wounded, colonel, and have the honour to request you will order
another officer to take command of the left."  He then ambled away on
his old nag towards Corunna.

"Close in, men--fill up the gaps," was the incessant cry of the
officers and sergeants; "close up the rear ranks--close up!" and
cheerily they did so, those brave hearts and true.

As it was, the sparks of the flints, the burning of priming (many of
the muskets being bushed with brass), caused many of the front rank
men to have their cheeks bleeding by splinters or scorched by powder;
but these were constant occurrences before the days of percussion
locks and caps.

The fire of the enemy was terrible, and all who were not wounded had
narrow escapes.  Quentin had no less than three during the first
hour; a ball struck one of his holster pipes, another tore through
his havresack, smashing his ration biscuits, and a third perforated
his shako, and had he been an inch taller, he had been a dead man.
The first tightening of the heart relaxed--the first wild thrill of
anxiety over, and Quentin felt as cool as the oldest veteran there.

The light field guns as they retired from Elvina came tearing past
with blood and human hair upon their wheels and on the hoofs of their
galloping horses, showing the carnage through which they had passed;
but they were again unlimbered and brought into action to check the
dragoons of Lorge, who menaced the right with pistol and sabre.

Sir John, who, with eagle eye, had been watching the movements of the
enemy through the openings in the white smoke which rolled along the
slopes and filled all the hollows, observed that no more infantry
were coming on than those which outflanked the right of Baird's
division, now commanded by his successor.

"Kennedy," said he to Quentin, whose coolness delighted and even
amused him, "ride to my friend Paget, and order him to wheel to the
right of the French advance, to menace and attack their gun battery.
Stanhope, spur on to Fraser and order him to support Paget."

While his aides rode off with these orders, he threw back the 4th
Regiment in person, and opened a heavy fire on the French, now
pouring along the valley on his right, while the old "Half Hundred"
and the Black Watch confronted those who were breaking through Elvina.

"Well done, 50th--well done, my majors!" he exclaimed to two
favourite officers who led the corps; but in the deadly struggle that
ensued, one, Major Charles Napier, was taken prisoner, and the other,
the Honourable Major Stanhope, was mortally wounded.

Strewed with killed and wounded, the field was now a veritable hell
upon earth, all along the lines in the valley and on the hills.

The boom of the heavy guns from the rock pealed solemnly on the ear,
and their bright red flashes came luridly out of the dusky vapour
where the haze of a winter eve and the smoke of battle mingled.

Then there was the shrill scream of the shells as they soared aloft,
describing fiery arcs through the cold grey sky, seeming to streak it
with light; and there was the _whirr_ or deep _hum_ of the cannon
shot as they tore along the corpse-strewn ground, or through the
empty air.

After delivering his orders to Lord Paget, Quentin turned his horse
to the right and pursued the Aris road in rear of Hope's division,
rushing at full speed over a great cork tree which the cannon shot
had cut down; but he reined up for a moment near the flank of the
Borderers.

Issuing from Palavia Abaxo, a corps of Delaborde's came furiously on
with a savage yell, their bayonets fixed and tricolours flying
defiantly, though torn by grape and musketry.

They were grenadiers of the Imperial Guard, and their long grey coats
seemed black and sombre amid the smoke.  Twice those men, the heroes
of Austerlitz and Marengo, wavered, though never ceasing to pour in
their fire; for the resolute aspect of the Borderers--calm and
voiceless, but determined--seemed to arrest them, so the human surge
paused in its onward roll.

Then it was that the Master of Rohallion, though cold-blooded, or
animated chiefly by that selfish cosmopolitanism which is so peculiar
to the Scottish aristocracy, felt something of his father's gallant
spirit swell up in his heart.

"The 50th and the Highlanders are carrying all before them on the
right," cried he, raising himself in his stirrups and brandishing his
sword, "come on, 25th, let them see that we on the left are brother
Scotsmen, as well as British soldiers--follow me--_charge_!"

And now, with a loud hurrah and like a living wall, while the pipes
rung shrill and high, the regiment rushed headlong on the foe, and
plunging into the mass with the bayonet, hurled it back in ruin and
bloody disorder beyond the village.

In this charge poor Rowland Askerne fell dead with a ball in his
heart; Colville perished under five bayonet wounds; Colyear had the
staff of the king's colour broken in his hand, and many others fell
killed and wounded; but Cosmo, as if his life was a charmed one, yet
escaped unhurt, and re-formed the corps in splendid order close to
the village of Palavia Abaxo.

Quentin, who had only checked his horse to witness his old comrades
make this most glorious charge, galloped on towards the right, where
he found the foe still pressing forward, and Moore, sword in hand, at
the head of the 42nd, most of whose pouches were now empty.

"My brave Highlanders!" the general exclaimed, "you have still your
bayonets--_remember Egypt_!"

With a wild cheer, their plumes and tartans waving amid the smoke,
the Celts rushed on and drove the French back in disorder upon Elvina.

A few minutes after this, just as Quentin dismounted to breathe his
horse, and just as Captain (afterwards General and Viscount) Hardinge
came forward to report that the Guards were advancing to support
Bentinck's brigade, a round shot from the enemy's battery on those
fatal rocks passed through them.

By the velocity of the ball, the mere force of the air, Quentin was
knocked down, breathless and panting.  When he staggered up, he found
the general lying near him, and a startled group gathering round them.

_The same ball_ had mortally wounded Sir John Moore, by shattering
his left breast and shoulder.  Hurled from his saddle, he now lay on
his back, bleeding and dying!



CHAPTER XX.

THE BURIAL.

  "Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note,
    As his corse to the ramparts we hurried,
  Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot,
    O'er the grave where our hero we buried.

  "We buried him darkly at dead of night,
    The sods with our bayonets turning,
  By the struggling moonbeams' misty light,
    And the lantern dimly burning."
                                  CHARLES WOLFE.


Moore's first impulse was to struggle into a sitting posture, and,
while resting on his right hand, to watch the wild conflict between
the French and Highlanders at Elvina.  Not a sigh of pain escaped
him, as he bent his keen blue eyes on the corps engaged in front; but
on seeing the black and crimson plumes of the 42nd triumphantly
waving in the village, a smile of gratification stole over his
handsome face, and he allowed himself to be borne to the rear by six
Highlanders and guardsmen, Quentin Kennedy and Captain Hardinge
assisting to keep him in an easy position with the sash of the latter.

"Report to General Hope that I am wounded," said he, calmly, "and
desire him to assume the command."

Quentin observed that Sir John's sword had got entangled in the
wound, and that the hilt was actually entering it.  On this, Captain
Hardinge kindly and gently attempted to unbuckle it.

"Never mind it, dear Hardinge," said the dying hero; "I had rather it
should go out of the field with me."

Fast flowed the blood, and the torture of the complicated wound was
terrible!  His hands were become cold and clammy, and his face grew
deadly pale in the dusky twilight.

"Colonel Graham of Balgowan, and Captain Woodford of the Guards, are
both gone for surgeons," said Quentin, in his ear, while Captain
Hardinge now strove in vain to stop the crimson current with his
sash; "they will soon be here."

"You will recover from your injuries," said Hardinge; "I can perceive
it, Sir John, by the expression of your eyes."

"No, Hardinge," said he, gravely; "I feel that to be impossible!"

Several times he made the bearers turn him round that he might behold
the field of battle, and then a sublime expression stole over his
fine face on seeing that everywhere the French were falling back, and
that his slender army, after all its sufferings, was triumphant!

At this moment a spring waggon passed, in which lay Colonel Wynch, of
the 4th Regiment, who was wounded.

"Who's in that blanket?" asked the colonel, faintly.

"Sir John Moore, most severely wounded," replied Quentin.

On hearing this, the good colonel, though bleeding fast, insisted on
letting his general have the waggon; but the Highlanders urged that
they would carry him easier in the blanket, "so they proceeded with
him to his quarters in Corunna, weeping as they went."

Still the echoing musketry pealed through the murky air, and still
the death-dealing blaze reddened the dusk of the coming evening.
Heavily it volleyed at times in the intervals between the cannon on
the rocks, and through the mingled haze up came the blood-red disc of
the winter moon.  Great clouds of white powder smoke crept sluggishly
along the earth, and through it the flashes of the French guns above
Elvina came redly and luridly out.

On being brought to his billet in Corunna, Sir John Moore was laid on
a pallet and examined, and then all could see the terrible nature of
his wound.

The entire left shoulder was shattered; the arm hung by a piece of
skin; the ribs over the heart were stripped of flesh and bruised to
pieces, and the muscles of the breast were torn in long strips that
had become interlaced by the recoil of the fatal cannon-ball.

In the dusk of the gloomy apartment, where he lay rapidly dying on a
poor mattrass, he recognised the face of Colonel Anderson, an old
friend and comrade of twenty years and more.  It was the third time
Anderson had seen him borne from a field thus steeped in blood, but
never before so awfully mangled.  Moore pressed the hand of his old
friend, who was deeply moved.

"Anderson," said he, with a sad smile, "you know I have always wished
to die in this way."

Anderson answered only with his tears, yet he was a weather-beaten
soldier, who had looked death in the face on many a hard-fought field.

"Are the French beaten?" Moore asked of all who came in,
successively, and the assurances that they were retiring fast soothed
his dying moments.

"I hope the people of England will be satisfied--I hope my dear
country will do me justice!" said he, with touching earnestness; "oh,
Anderson, you will see my friends at home as soon as you can--tell
them everything--my poor mother----"  Here his voice completely
failed him; he became deeply agitated; but after a pause said,
"Hope--Hope--I have much to say to him, but am too weak now!  Are all
my aides-de-camp well?"

"Yes," replied Anderson, who did not wish to distress him by the
information that young Captain Burrard was mortally wounded.

"I have made my will, and--and--have remembered all my servants.
Colbourne has it--tell Willoughby that Colbourne is to get his
lieutenant-colonelcy.--Oh, it is a great satisfaction to me that we
have beaten the French.  Is Paget in the room?"

"No," replied Anderson, in a low voice.

"It is General Paget, I mean; remember me to him--he is a fine
fellow!  I feel myself so strong--ah, I fear that I shall be a long
time in dying!"

In the intervals of his faint and disjointed remarks the boom of the
distant artillery was occasionally heard, and their fitful flashes
reddened the walls and windows of the room where he lay.

"Is that young lieutenant of the Fusiliers--Kennedy--is, is he here?"

"I am here, sir," said Quentin, in a choking voice.

"I cannot see you--the light of my eyes fails me now.  I meant--I
meant--for you."

What he "meant" to have done, Quentin was fated never to know.

In broken accents the general thanked the surgeons politely for the
care they had taken; and apologized for the trouble he gave them.  He
then said to the son of Earl Stanhope, who served on his staff,

"Remember me--Stanhope--to--your sister."

He referred to the famous and brilliant Lady Hester Stanhope, whom he
was said to have loved, and who died in Syria in 1839.  Here his
voice again completely failed him, and while pressing to his breast
the hand of Colonel Anderson, who had saved his life at St. Lucia, he
expired without a struggle in his forty-eighth year......

All stood in silence around the pallet whereon that brave gentleman
and Christian soldier lay dead, and some time elapsed before they
could realize the full extent of the calamity which had befallen
them, and with moistened eyes they watched the pale still face, the
fallen jaw, the shattered and blood-soaked form.

Just as Colonel Anderson knelt down to close the eyes of his dead
friend and commander, Quentin Kennedy, with a heavy sigh in his
throat, a sob in his breast, issued from the house, and grasping the
sabre of Colbert, Moore's doubly-prized gift, he leaped on his horse,
and, as if to relieve himself from thoughts of grief and sorrow,
galloped towards the battle-field.

The night was now quite dark, and Sir John Hope had succeeded in
following out Moore's dispositions so well, that he had driven the
whole French line so far back that the British had now advanced far
beyond their original position.

All Soult's ammunition was expended, though his troops were still the
most numerous.  He could not advance, and neither could he retreat,
as the rain-swollen Mero was foaming along in full flood in his rear,
and the rudely re-constructed bridge of El Burgo was his only avenue
for escape.

It was now that Hope ordered a great line of watch-fires to be
lighted by the picquets, and to have them kept burning to deceive the
enemy, while the wounded, so far as possible, were carried off, and
the whole army embarked, covered by Rowland Hill's brigade, which was
posted in and near the ramparts of the citadel.

The field presented a scene of unexampled horror as Quentin rode back
towards Corunna.  Worn out by the long day passed under arms, the
troops fell back, in somewhat shattered order, by companies and
regiments towards the beach, the shadow of night concealing
innumerable episodes of suffering, of solitary and unpitied
dissolution.

The British loss was estimated at eight hundred, the French at three
thousand men, so superior were our arms and firing.

In a place where the dead lay thick there sat a piper of the 92nd; he
was wounded and bleeding to death, yet he played to his retreating
comrades so long as strength remained, and then lay back dead, with
the mouth-piece of the chanter between his relaxed jaws.

Everywhere in the dark Quentin heard voices calling for water.

"Un verre de l'eau, pour l'amour de Dieu!" cried many a poor
Frenchman unheeded, as the columns fell back in fierce exultation
upon Corunna, in many instances double quick.

Quentin rode back to the town, a three-miles' distance, and having
neither post nor duty to repair to, went straight through the dark
and crowded streets, which were full of soldiers and terrified
citizens, to the house where he had seen his beloved leader expire.
The door stood open; the mansion was dark, empty, chilly, and silent,
and the body had been removed, he knew not where.

Just as he was turning away irresolute whether to inquire for the
Borderers and get into one of the hundred boats now plying in the
dark with war-worn troops, between the mole and fleet of transports,
or whether he should join the staff of General Hill, whose brigade
still occupied the citadel, a mounted staff-officer passed near him,
and, by the light of a torch held by a Spaniard, who ran through the
street, they recognised each other.

"'Tis well I have met you, Kennedy--come this way--we are about to
pay the last earthly rites to poor Sir John Moore."

He who spoke was Captain Hardinge, and Kennedy, without a word, for
his heart was very full, accompanied him into the strong old citadel
of Corunna.  The church bells were tolling midnight, and all was
pitchy blackness around, for the moon was hidden; but in the dim
distance, along the abandoned position on the hills, a line of
watch-fires burned like dim and wavering stars to deceive the beaten
but yet too powerful enemy.

The dim light of a lantern, upheld by a soldier, shone faintly on a
group of officers who stood near, silent, sad, and thoughtful, and
leaning on their swords.  All were bareheaded.  Beside them lay a
body muffled in a blue cloak and a blanket soaked with blood--the
mutilated remains of Moore, for whom no coffin could be procured.

Close by, a party of the 9th or East Norfolk Regiment were digging a
grave, and there stood the chaplain-general, book in hand, but
without a surplice, for the sound of distant cannon announced that
the French, already discovering that they were foiled, were pushing
on to St. Lucia, and hastened the interment.

The "lantern dimly burning" was held by Sergeant Rollo, of the
Artillery, who died lately at Tynemouth, in his eighty-second year,
and by its fitful light the body was deposited in its last home.

"Aid me, good gentlemen," said Colonel Anderson, with a broken voice,
as the aides-de-camp lowered the remains into the rudely-dug hole,
Quentin as the youngest carrying the feet.  "It is a strange
fatality, this!  He always said that if he fell in battle, he wished
to be buried where he died, and you see, gentlemen, his wish has been
fulfilled."

Near him lay his countryman, General Anstruther, who had died of
suffering and privations on the march.

Hastily the burial service was read, and the soldiers of the brave
old 9th covered him up, literally, "the sod with their bayonets
turning."

All lingered for a few minutes near the spot, and when they withdrew,
there was not an eye unmoistened among them.

Thus passed away Sir John Moore, like Wolfe, in the moment of victory!

"A soldier from his earliest youth," says General Napier, "he
thirsted for the honours of his profession, and feeling that he was
worthy to lead a British army, hailed the fortune that placed him at
the head of the troops destined for Spain.  The stream of time passed
rapidly, and the inspiring hopes of triumph disappeared, but the
austerer glory of suffering remained; with a firm heart he accepted
that gift of a severe fate, and confiding in the strength of his
genius, disregarded the clamours of presumptuous ignorance; opposing
sound military views to the foolish projects so insolently thrust
upon him by the ambassador, he conducted a long and arduous retreat
with sagacity, intelligence, and fortitude.  No insult could disturb,
no falsehood deceive him, no remonstrances shake his determination;
fortune frowned without subduing his constancy; death struck, and the
spirit of the man remained unbroken, when his shattered body scarcely
afforded it habitation.  Having done all that was just towards
others, he remembered what was due to himself.  Neither the shock of
the mortal blow, nor the lingering hours of acute pain which preceded
his dissolution, could quell the pride of his gallant heart, or lower
the feeling with which (conscious of merit) he asserted his right to
the gratitude of the country he had served so truly.

"If glory be a distinction, _for such a man death is not a leveller_!"



CHAPTER XXI.

TOO LATE.

  "The storm of fight is hushed; the mingled roar
  Of charging squadrons swells the blast no more:
  Gone are the bands of France; the crested pride
  Of war, which lately clothed the mountain side,
  Gone--as the winter cloud which tempests bear,
  In broken shadows through the waste of air."


Grey dawn came slowly in, stealing over land and sea, as Quentin rode
from the citadel of Corunna.

It was difficult to believe that one night--one short night
only--filled the interval of time since the fierce excitement of
yesterday.  Within those few hours how much had happened!  Many an
eye that met his with a kind smile was sightless now, and many a
cheerful and hearty voice with which he was familiar was silenced for
ever.

When passing through one of the streets, he came suddenly upon Sir
John Hope, who now commanded the army, and who said, while reining in
his horse, which looked jaded and weary as himself--

"Oh--glad I've seen you, Mr. Kennedy; is your horse fresh?"

"Tolerably so, sir," replied Quentin.

"Then you will oblige me by riding round by the Santiago road, over
the ground where Fraser's division was posted yesterday, before he
advanced to support Paget, and bring off any stragglers you may see
there.  We have not a moment to lose, as the French are getting
several guns into position above the San Diego Point, to open on our
transports."

Without waiting for an answer, and as if his expressed wish was quite
sufficient, the general cantered off towards the mole.

No way delighted with this duty, in the grey twilight of the morning,
Quentin galloped through the Pescadera, quitted the outer
fortifications, issued upon the road that led to Santiago de
Compostella, and ere long found himself on that which he had now no
heart to look upon--the field of battle--that vast sepulchre--that
ripe harvest of death and suffering!

The dead were there mutilated in every conceivable mode, and lying in
every conceivable position; some lay in little piles where the grape
had mowed them down.  Red-coat and blue-coat, Frank and Briton, the
red-trowsered Celt of Gaul and the kilted Celt of Scotland, lay over
each other in heaps, many of them yet in the death clutch of each
other, but all sleeping peacefully the long, long slumber that knows
no waking.  It was a sad and terrible homily!

Muskets smashed at the stock, swords broken, bayonets bent, caps
crushed; belts, plumes, and epaulettes torn; drums broken and bugles
trod flat; half-buried shot and exploded shells, strewed all the
ground, which was furrowed, torn up, and soaked in blood; trees were
barked and lopped by the passing bullets, and hedges were scorched by
fire.

Already the plunderers had been at work; an officer, covered with
wounds, lay stripped, nearly nude, so his uniform had doubtless been
a rich one.  He was quite dead, and wore on his left arm a bracelet
of female hair--a love relic; his head rested in the lap of a
beautiful Spanish girl, so dark that she was half like a mulatto or
gitana of Granada, and such she appeared to be by her picturesque
costume.  She was weeping bitterly, and over her dark cheeks and
quivering lips the hot tears fell upon the cold face of the dead man.
Her sobs were quite inaudible, for her grief was too deep for
utterance.

Close by, with the medals of many an honourable battle on his breast,
lay a grey-haired grenadier of the Garde Impériale, who had died
about twenty minutes before, and the calm of dissolution was
smoothing out the wrinkles that care, it might be a hidden sorrow,
had traced upon his now ghastly face--so smoothly then that he became
in aspect almost young again, as when, perhaps, a conscript he left
his father's cottage and his mother's arms.

As Quentin rode on many called to him for succour that he was unable
to yield, and to their piteous cries he was compelled to turn a deaf
ear.  Many lay wounded, faint and unseen, among the long rich grass,
where they were lulled alike by weakness and the hum of insect life
awaking with the rising sun; and these scarcely noticed him as he
trotted slowly past, carefully guiding his horse among them.

Tormented by thirst, many crawled, like bruised worms, to where a
little runnel ran down the green slope from San Cristoval, and drank
thirstily of its water in the hollow of their hands, and without a
shudder, though the purity of the stream was tainted by blood, for
further up lay a soldier of the Cameron Highlanders, dead, with his
head buried in the stream.  He, too, had crawled there; but the
weight of his knapsack had pressed his head and shoulders below the
water, and thus, unable to rise from weakness, the poor fellow had
actually been choked in a hole about twelve inches deep.

No stragglers were visible, and an awful stillness had succeeded to
the roar of sound that rung there yesternight; and now from his
reverie Quentin was roused by the boom of a cannon at a distance.
Others followed rapidly, and at irregular intervals.  It was the
French guns above St. Lucia firing over the flat point of San Diego
on the last of the transports and the last of our troops who were
embarking.  Hill's brigade had now left the citadel, and Beresford,
with the rearguard, had already put off from the shore.

Such were the startling tidings Quentin received from a mounted
Spaniard, a fellow not unlike a contrabandista, who passed, spurring
with his box-stirrups recklessly over the field towards Santiago.  On
hearing this, Quentin instantly galloped towards the harbour.

It was too late now to think of getting his horse off, so he resolved
to abandon it and take the first boat he could obtain.  The last of
the troops were gone now in the English launches, and not a single
Spanish barquero could he prevail upon to put off; and so furious was
the cannonade which the French had opened from the headland to the
southward of Corunna, that many of the masters of our crowded
transports cut their cables; four ran foul of each other and went
aground in shoal water.  Then, amid the cries, cheers, uproar, and a
thousand other sounds on land and sea, the troops were removed from
them to others, and they were set on fire, while the first ships of
the fleet were standing out to sea, and had already made an offing.

This delay nearly proved favourable to Quentin.  A Spanish boatman at
last offered for ten duros to take him off to the nearest ship, which
lay about a mile distant; but just as he dismounted to embark, a yell
of rage and terror was uttered by the crowd upon the mole, and a
party of French light dragoons rode through them recklessly, treading
some under foot and sabreing others.

At the risk of being pistolled, Quentin was about to spring into the
sea, when an officer made an attempt to cut him down, but his cap
saved his head from the first stroke.  In wild desperation, with one
hand he clung to the chasseur's bridle, and with the other strove to
grasp his uplifted sword-arm.

"Rendez-vous!" cried the Frenchman, furiously.

"Eugene--sauvez-moi!" was all that Quentin could utter, ere his
assailant, whom at that moment he recognised, cut him over the head,
and he fell, blinded in his own blood.

It was the _last_ blow struck in our first campaign in Spain.

When Quentin partially recovered he found himself supported in the
arms of the young Lieutenant de Ribeaupierre, who was profuse in his
exclamations of sorrow and regret as he bound the wound up with his
own hands, and led him away from the mole, expressing genuine anxiety
and commiseration.

"Take care of your prisoner, M. le Lieutenant," said an officer,
authoritatively.  "_Sangdieu!_ we have not picked up so many!"

"I shall be answerable for him.  Ah, mon Dieu! why did I not know you
sooner?  Why did you not speak first, my dear friend?" Ribeaupierre
continued to repeat.

The captain of his troop gave them a stern and scrutinizing glance.
He was a forbidding looking man, with that swaggering
spur-and-sabre-clattering bearing peculiar to some of those who had
found their epaulettes on the barricades or among the ruins of the
Bastile--a species of military ruffian, whose bearing was tempered
only by the politeness which all military discipline--French
especially--infuses in the manners of men.

"Take his sword away," said this personage, gruffly.

"Eugene, ask him if I may retain it--it was the last gift of Sir John
Moore?" said Quentin, with intense anxiety.

"That is well--you shall keep it, monsieur," said the gruff captain;
"Sir John Moore was indeed a soldier!"

"Am I, then, a prisoner?" said Quentin, with a sigh of intense
bitterness, as he looked after the distant ships, now beyond even the
range of the guns at San Diego, and bearing away with all their sails
set--away for England!

"My captain has seen you--it must be so," replied Ribeaupierre,
leading him into the city; "but prisoner or not, remember, mon ami,
that you are with _me_."

The measured tramp of infantry was now heard, and guarded by fixed
bayonets, some thirty or forty British prisoners passed with an air
of sullen defiance in their faces and bearing. They were men of all
regiments, gleaned up on the field or in the suburbs, and they were
marched towards the citadel. Quentin gave a convulsive start as he
recognised the face of Cosmo among them!

He saw Quentin covered with blood--wounded to all appearance
severely, and a prisoner too; so he gave him a parting smile full of
malignity and hate.

Quentin cared not for this, he sprang forward to speak with him; but
at that moment the blood burst forth afresh, his senses reeled, and
he fainted.

On that evening the tricolour was seen hoisted half-mast high on the
citadel of Corunna, and the British fleet, though "far away on the
billow," could hear the French artillery as they fired a funeral
salute over the grave of Sir John Moore, in a spirit that was worthy
of France and the best days of France's chivalry!

True it is, indeed, that "he whose talents exacted the praises of
Soult, of Wellington, and of NAPOLEON, could be no ordinary soldier."

But there was one in whose heart a blank remained that no posthumous
honours could ever fill up--the heart of his mother, to whom Sir John
Moore was ever a tender and affectionate son, and whom he loved with
great filial devotion.

It was not for some weeks after all this that Quentin learned that
the Master of Rohallion had been sent a prisoner of war to Verdun, in
the department of the Meuse, where his fierce pride having procured
him the enmity of the commandant, he could never effect an exchange;
thus he remained on parole five long and miserable years, even until
the battle of Toulouse was fought; and, in the meantime, worthy old
Jack Middleton recovered from his wound, and was appointed
lieutenant-colonel of the 2nd Battalion of the King's Own Borderers.



CHAPTER XXII.

MADAME DE RIBEAUPIERRE.

  "Who should it be?  Where shouldst thou look for kindness?
  When we are sick, where can we look for succour?
  When we are wretched, where can we complain?
  And when the world looks cold and surly on us,
  Where can we go to meet a warmer eye
  With such sure confidence as to a mother?"
                                      JOANNA BAILLIE.


A month after the occurrence of the stirring events we have just
narrated, Quentin Kennedy found himself an inmate of the same house
with his young French friend at Corunna--the pretty villa that faced
the bay of Orsan, the same mansion in which the Master of Rohallion
spent that remarkable night before the battle.

General de Ribeaupierre had been appointed by Marshal Soult military
governor of the town and citadel of Corunna, in which there was a
strong French garrison; but instead of occupying the gloomy quarters
assigned to the governor, Madame de Ribeaupierre, who had joined him,
preferred the little Villa de Orsan near the coast, and had prevailed
upon him to place Eugene on his staff as an aide-de-camp, and thus
the whole of her household now seemed, for the time, to be peacefully
located in that remote corner of Gallicia.

Both madame and her husband the general were considerably past the
prime of life.  He was a fine courtly gentleman of the old French
school, and in his secret heart was a sincere monarchist, but not so
rashly as to oppose in act or spirit the tide of events which had
replaced the line of St. Louis by Napoleon, with whom he had served
early in life, as we have before stated, in the Regiment of La Fere.

Madame might still be called handsome, though long past forty.
Perfectly regular, finely cut, and having all the impress of good
birth and high culture, her features were remarkably beautiful.  Her
manner was singularly sweet, gentle, and pleasing; yet she had an eye
and a lip indicative of a proud and lofty spirit, that had enabled
her to confront the blackest horrors of the Revolution in France.

Powdered white as snow, she wore her hair dressed back over a little
cushion, with a few stray ringlets falling behind in the coquettish
manner of the old Bourbon days (when patches and pomatum were in all
their glory), while her full bust, plump white arms, her short
sleeves with long elbow-gloves, her peaked stomacher and her
amplitude of brocade skirt, with many a deep flounce and frill of old
Maltese lace, all made her a pleasing picture at a time when, in
imitation of the prevailing French taste, the English woman of
fashion wore a huge muslin cap, her waist under her armpits, and her
skirts so tight that she resembled nothing in this world but a long
bolster set on end.

Knowing how much the young prisoner of war and Eugene owed to each
other, and how much the former had suffered recently under the sabre
of the latter, she rivalled her husband in kindness, and was
unremitting in her hospitality, her nursing, and her motherly
attention.

Quentin had the care of the best surgeons on the French staff--a
class of medical men who far excelled the rabble of apothecary boys
then commissioned for the British army; the cool season of the year
was favourable for his recovering from such an ugly slash on the
caput as Eugene's steel had bestowed; so, our hero, having youth and
health on his side, grew rapidly well, and by the 16th of
February--one month after the battle--he had become quite
convalescent; but politeness even could scarcely make him repress his
impatience to begone; yet he knew that, though the guest of General
Ribeaupierre, he was still a prisoner of war, and could not leave any
French territory until duly exchanged.

During his illness he had many a strange and fantastic dream of Flora
and of home.  But now there came to him dim memories of an infancy
_beyond_ that spent at Rohallion; there was the quaint foreign town,
with its winding river, its antique bridge, its boats and windmills.
Like a dream, or some vision of mystic memory, he remembered this
place in all its details and features, and with them came the old and
confused recollection of a lady, it might be, nay, it _must_ have
been, his own mother, in rich velvet with powdered hair.  Then came
his father's face, pale and despairing, and the night of the wreck at
the Partan Craig, all jumbled oddly together.

Was it a sense of pre-existence--that sense felt by so many at
different times--that haunted him?

Was it a sense of the _unreality_ of the present f conflicting with
the certainty of the past?

We cannot say; but there came upon his mind a strange consciousness
that this scene, this river, with its town and woods and hills, this
lady in velvet and powder, were not creations of the fancy, and were
not new to him.

Was it a phase of that which is termed by Dr. Wigan the "duality of
the human mind," which comes upon us at times--

  "As when with downcast eyes we muse and brood,
  _And ebb into a former life?_"


We pretend not to say; but poor Quentin was sorely puzzled, and that
sabre cut in no way made his reasoning faculties clearer.

His room, a large one facing the bay of Orsan, was decorated for him
daily by a quantity of beautiful flowers, which madame procured from
the conservatory of the captain-general--flowers so charming at that
season--scarlet and white camellias, rare geraniums, and glorious
roses of every hue; while in the trellis-work verandah without were
magnolias and creeping plants whose tendrils were covered with
odoriferous flowers, through which the sea-breeze came, blending and
mingling pleasantly with the fragrant and earthy odour of the tiled
floor, which was daily sprinkled with spring water.

And there in a softly-cushioned easy-chair he sat for hours gazing
dreamily out upon the sunlit bay, where the brown Spanish
fisher-boats, with lateen sails striped red and white, manned by dark
and picturesque-looking fellows in shirts and caps of scarlet and
blue, were always preparing for sea, or tacking out of the bay with
the white foam curling under the bows--a life of movement and bustle
that contrasted sadly with his own inertia and made him feverish with
impatience.

Even Eugene's aspect, as he came clattering and rattling to and fro,
between the citadel and the villa, in uniform and accoutred with
spurs and sabre, showed that the game of life was still played
briskly by others, and fretted Quentin's soul.

"A prisoner," he repeated to himself, "and for heaven knows how long!
Is this the fruit of my ambition?  Is this the prize I have striven,
struggled, and starved--fought and bled for during all the horrors of
that campaign?  Unlucky indeed was the hour when Hope sent me beyond
the city on a bootless errand, and when Eugene cut me down on that
accursed beach!  Captivity even thus, though surrounded by every
kindness and luxury, is more than I can either bear or endure!
Besides," he added, bitterly, aloud, "I may be reported dead or
missing, and Flora--may--might--and my commission too--may be
cancelled."

"No, no, my good young friend," said Madame de Ribeaupierre, who had
entered unheard; "my husband, the general, saw all that properly
arranged, and despatched Eugene in person, with a memorandum of your
name and regiment, to the commissaire for British prisoners, to
inform him that we had you here, where we mean to keep you as long as
we can."

"It was most kind, dear madame," said Quentin, bowing low to hide
confusion for his petulance, and leading the lady to a chair close by
his own.

"Kind, monsieur, say you?  It was but just and proper that your
friends should know of your safety," said she, with a bending of the
neck, a species of bow that reminded Quentin of old Lady Rohallion;
for this Frenchwoman had all that old-fashioned grace which, in
Scotland, died with the Jacobites, and in France expired with the
monarchy.  "Judging by my own fears and emotions, I was most anxious
that--that your mother, I presume, should know that you, at least,
had not perished on that unhappy 16th of January."

"My mother," repeated Quentin, and with the memory of his recent
dreams a thrill of sadness came over his heart, as he looked into the
fine dark eyes of this noble French matron, who seemed so inspired by
feminine tenderness and commiseration that she placed her white hand
caressingly on the half-healed scar which Quentin's short crisp hair
but partially concealed.

"A naughty boy was my Eugene to do this, but he has never ceased to
deplore it.  Yes, your mother; ah, mon Dieu! it was well that she did
not see as I saw you, after the mischief Eugene wrought, when the
Chasseurs of the 24th carried you into the citadel covered with
blood!  Yet, if she knew all, she might safely trust you with me; for
I have known what it is to lose a child ere this, and others whom I
loved dearly--to be left alone, reft of that being whom I hoped was
to love and remember me long after I had passed away.  Eugene is a
good boy, and I love him dearly; but you--your mother, mon ami?"

"Madame, I have no mother."

"Mon Dieu! and you so young!"

"No, nor any relation in the world," said Quentin, in a voice half
angry and half broken, "save some brave friends who died at Corunna,
and one in Scotland, far away, I never had any who loved me."

"L'Ecosse--l'Ecosse!" repeated Madame de Ribeaupierre with sudden
interest.  "We old-fashioned French love the memory of the old
alliances when our royal houses so often intermarried, and still
respect the land where the line of St. Louis finds a home; and so,"
she added, with kindling eyes, "monsieur is an Ecossais?"

"Yes, madame, I have every reason to believe so?"

"To believe--only to believe, monsieur?"

"Yes, madame."

"How?"

"It is my secret," said Quentin, smiling.

"Pardonnez-moi?" said madame, colouring slightly.

"My name is one of the oldest in Scotland."

"True--true; mon Dieu!  I know there are earls of that name who have
the tressure floré and counterfloré in their coat-of-arms," said she,
while a sad and beautiful smile lit up her fine face, and she
smoothed her powdered hair with a tremulous hand.  "I had a dear
friend who once bore the name--but it was in the old days of the
monarchy, and for the sake of that friend I shall love you more than
ever;" and patting Quentin on the head, she kissed him on the brow
just as her son entered with a servant in livery, who came to
announce that the carriage was at the door.

"Tres bien, Louis," said she; "monsieur will accompany us, Eugene,
the day is so fine; he shall take his first drive with me, and you
may follow on horseback if you choose.  I don't like spurs in a
carriage."

"I shall be very happy, my dear madame, though our mutual friend, the
General de Ribeaupierre, has seen fit to send me no less than four
times this morning with absurd messages to the sappers who are
repairing the bridge of El Burgo," replied Eugene, whose boots and
light-green uniform bore evident traces of mud.

"Come, Eugene, and never mind; as I am only your mamma, and not your
intended, you have no need to be so particular with your toilet; and
if your horse is weary, order a fresh one."

Quentin enjoyed the drive greatly, as it was his first active step
towards final recovery and strength.

It was the evening of a clear and sunny day--one of the earliest of
spring--and Quentin surveyed, with equal delight and interest, the
long lines of massive bastions, towers, and battlemented walls that
enclosed the town and citadel of Corunna--that vast stone frontage,
with all its rows of grim cannon that peered through dark port-holes
or frowned _en barbette_, steeped in the warm radiance of a red
setting sun that tinged the sea and surf with the hue of blood,
sinking every alternate angle of the fortifications in deep and
solemn shadow.

The music of a French regimental band came floating pleasantly from
time to time on the thin air, as they played the grand march of the
Emperor along the ramparts; and now the carriage, by Eugene's desire,
was stopped near a part of the citadel where Sir John Moore's grave
lay, and where the French sappers were already building the great
granite monument which the noble Soult erected to his memory, and
which the Marquis of Romana completed.

Quentin descended from the carriage and approached the spot.

He was the last, the only British soldier in Corunna now.  He sat
down on one of the blocks and looked wistfully at the place where he
knew the poor shattered corse lay uncoffined.  Then the manly figure,
the gentle face, the soldierly presence, and the winning manner of
Moore came vividly to memory, and Quentin covered his eyes with his
hand, as he could not control his emotion.

He was the last solitary mourner by the grave of him whose memory
Charles Wolfe embalmed in verse.

The French sappers, who had been singing and laughing gaily at their
work, respected his grief; they became quite silent, and saluted him
with great politeness.  Then Madame de Ribeaupierre took him by the
hand and they drove away.

In the general's well-hung, cosy, and handsome Parisian carriage, he
passed more than once over the field of battle.  Its sad débris had
vanished now; the people of the adjacent villages had gleaned up
every bullet and button.  The dead were buried in trenches.  Here and
there might lie a solitary grave, but already the young spring grass
was growing over them all.  Quentin knew the ground where the
Borderers had been posted, and thus he knew which of those fatal
mounds was likely to hold the noble and true-hearted Rowland Askerne,
Colville, and others whom he knew and mourned for.

Even the _étourdi_ Eugene was silent, when, for the last time, they
surveyed the field.

"Here the 24th charged a square of one of your Scots regiments," said
he; "and here fell poor Jules de Marbœuf.  It was his last battle."

"Killed?"

"Yes--dead as Hector, by some of your bare-legged Scotsmen, who took
the eagle of the 24th.  _Sacre Dieu!_--think of that!"*


* In February after the battle, two French eagles, each weighing
fifteen ounces of silver, were sold to a silversmith in Chichester by
a soldier of the 92nd Highlanders, who said that he had bayoneted the
Frenchmen, and brought the trophies home in his knapsack.--_Annual
Register_ for 1809.


"And Donna Isidora?" said Quentin, not caring much about the eagle.

"The sorrowful widow--_peste!_ she is at Lugo with the Light
Division."

"She is not coming here, I trust?"

"Can't say, mon camarade; but pardieu, I should hope not."

Though Quentin knew that his commission and promotion in the 7th
Fusiliers were now both secured, he writhed under the idea of being a
prisoner of war; but there was no help for it.  He had given his
parole of honour, and by that he was bound to abide.

Not even the keen longing to see Flora, to tell his story and lay his
laurels, while they were yet fresh, at her feet, could lure him to
break his bonds; but being intensely wearied of Corunna, he hailed
with extreme satisfaction a change in the plans of the really
delightful family with whom he resided.

Tidings of a new and more powerful expedition, destined to drive the
French from Spain, under Sir Arthur Wellesley, the future Duke of
Wellington, had now come to all the Emperor's marshals and garrisons
officially; and thus General de Ribeaupierre resolved on sending his
lady, in charge of Eugene, to Paris, whither they begged Quentin to
accompany them.

Anything was better than lingering in Corunna or setting out for
Verdun; and so, bidding adieu to the kind old general, within a few
weeks after his convalescence, Quentin found himself kindly adjusting
the wraps and mufflings of madame on the deck of the _Bien Aimé_, a
privateer brig, mounting six 12-pounders, M. Marin, captain, bound
for the mouth of the Loire; and long did he and Eugene pace the deck
together that night, building castles, exchanging confidences, and
smoking cigars, while the wild waves of the Bay of Biscay tore past
in dark ridges to leeward, and the last of the Galician hills, the
great Sierra de Mondonedo, sank into the dark world of waters astern.



CHAPTER XXIII.

THE "BIEN AIMÉ."

  "He had fought the red English, he said,
  In many a battle in Spain;
  He cursed the red English, and prayed
  To meet and fight them again!"--THACKERAY.


_Le Bien Aimé_ encountered very rough weather, and beat hard against
the westerly winds which always prevail in the stormy Bay of Biscay,
where the broad waves of the Atlantic roll in all their full and
unbroken weight.

The third night was so dark and gusty, that neither Quentin Kennedy
nor Eugene de Ribeaupierre turned in, but remained at the table much
later than usual, listening to the somewhat piratical yarns and
experiences of M. Jehan Marin, a short, thick-set, and savage-looking
fellow, who wore a tricoloured nightcap, a pea-jacket, and a broad
black belt, with a square brass buckle of most melodramatic size.  He
viewed Quentin evidently with intense dislike, as one of those sacré
Anglais, whom he hated as so many snakes or other reptiles, and to
this sentiment was added a profound contempt for him as a soldier.
Quentin was soon sensible of all this, but deemed it neither safe nor
worth his while to notice it; besides, the life of a prisoner of war
was deemed of very little value by land or sea in those days.

On this night, just as they went on deck to have a last glance at the
pitchy blackness amid which _Le Bien Aimé_ was careering, a flash
broke through it, and a cannon-shot boomed across her forefoot;
another flash followed, and the shot went through her foresail, which
was bellying out upon the wind.

"Tonnerre de Dieu! what is that?" cried M. Marin, choking and
sputtering with passion and alarm, as he jumped upon a carronade and
peered to windward, from whence the assault came, but could see
nothing, so intense was the darkness.

Boom! another heavy gun came, and now he could make out a strange
ship, looming large and black on the larboard bow, and carrying an
enormous spread of canvas, considering the nature of the night, and
it was the guns of her starboard-quarter that were tickling _Le Bien
Aimé_ in this rough fashion.

"Nombril de Beelzebub!" bellowed Captain Marin, "here we are in
action without seeing or knowing who the devil it is with!  Beat to
quarters--pipe up the hammocks and open the magazine!"

Just as he was speaking and gesticulating furiously, another shot
knocked the fiddle-head of the _Bien Aimé_ all to splinters; so
matters were looking decidedly serious.  By this time, and long ere
the drum beat, his crew, half dressed, were all at their quarters,
and the hammocks were bundled anyhow into the side nettings.

"Clear away those weather-guns--cast loose the lashings, and load!"
shouted Marin; "stand by the watch to shorten sail; 'way aloft and
hand the topgallant sails; small-arm men, aft, and blaze away!"

_Le Bien Aimé_ was now hove full in the wind's eye, so that the next
shot from this strange ship went no one knew where.

There were terrible confusion, growling, swearing, with lack of
discipline, on board, but no lack of pluck among the crew, and fifty
of the most finished ragamuffins that ever sailed from the Loire or
Brest stood to their guns.

The next cannon that flashed from the strange ship made Quentin, who
clung to a belaying pin on the port side, spring backwards
involuntarily, the red light of the explosion seemed so close; but it
enabled him to see for an instant the large ship with her lee side
full of men.

"She is a frigate, at least!" exclaimed Marin, with a frightful oath,
as he drew his cutlass; "we cannot fight her; she may be French, and
the whole affair a mistake, though: hush, silence fore and aft--they
are hailing!"

"Ho--brig ahoy!" sang out a voice in most unmistakeable English.

Jehan Marin ground his yellow teeth--those cursed English!  Could he
doubt that any but they would first fire and then question?

"Hallo!" he replied.

"What brig is that?" hailed the officer, through a trumpet, and
Quentin felt his heart beating wildly with anxiety and anticipation.
Next moment he heard Eugene and the French skipper engaged in a brief
but very angry expostulation.

"What is the matter?" he asked, as Eugene joined him.

"Don't inquire," said he, "lest I blush that I am a Frenchman."

"Then your conference concerned me?"

"It certainly did, mon ami."

"How?"

"Marin wished to force you to deceive your countrymen, by replying to
them in English--replying with his pistol at your head.  _Sangdieu!_
you comprehend?"

Before Quentin could reply, the question,

"What brig is that? d--n it, you had better look sharp!" came over
the black surging water from the foe.

"Stand by the braces, and be ready to fill the sails to the
yard-heads, and bear away right before the wind," said Marin; then,
raising his voice, he shouted a deep and bitter curse through his
trumpet.

"Hail again," cried the officer; "this is His Britannic Majesty's
ship _Medusa_--send a boat off instantly with your skipper and his
papers."

Instead of complying, Marin daringly gave orders to fire his three
12-pounders on the portside, to fill his yards, and bear right away
before the western breeze; but on the appearance of the first
portfire glittering on his deck, bang came another shot from this
pugnacious stranger, which took his foreyard right in the sling; it
came crashing down on deck, breaking the arm of one man and the leg
of another; and before M. Marin had made up his mind what to do next,
the _Medusa_, a fifty-gun ship, forged a little way ahead of him, as
if she meant to sweep his deck or sink him; but neither was her
object, for a boat's crew of those "pestilent Englishmen," with
pistols in their belts and cutlasses in their teeth, were alongside
in a moment, holding on with boat-hooks to the forechains, as the now
partly unmanageable brig rose and fell heavily on the black waves of
that stormy midnight sea.  Another boat-load clung like leeches to
the starboard quarter, and in less than five minutes the _Bien Aimé_
was the lawful prize of the British frigate, _Medusa_.

Her crew were all disarmed and placed under a guard of marines; a
strong hawser was run on board and made fast to the capstan or
windlass, the yard heads were trimmed, a jury fore-yard rigged in a
trice, and the privateer in tow of the _Medusa_ stood off towards the
coast of "perfidious Albion."  The weather was so rough, however,
that they were compelled to slack off or let go the towline; but
lanterns were hoisted at the foreyard, and thus they kept company
till daylight.

"Fortune changes," said Eugene, laughing with all the nonchalance of
a Frenchman; "you are now free, and I am a prisoner."

The prize-master, a rough and somewhat elderly man for a middy--one
of those hardworking fellows whose boast it used to be that they came
into the service through the hawse-holes, questioned the cabin
passengers sharply and categorically.

"You, sir," said he, looking at Eugene, cutlass in hand; "what are
you?"

"Eugene de Ribeaupierre, sous-lieutenant in the French service, and
ready to give my parole."

"Keep it till we are at Spithead; and you, sir," he added, turning
furiously to Quentin, "are an Englishman, I see, and in the French
service too--eh?"

"No, sir; I happen to be a Scotsman, and in the British service."

"Where are your papers?"

"I have none."

"Oho; d--n me! you have none?" said he, suspiciously.

"No; but my name is recorded in the ship's books as a prisoner of
war, a lieutenant in the 7th Fusiliers, proceeding to Paris on
parole."

The mid shook Quentin's hand on hearing this, and ordered a jorum of
grog, in which Eugene good-naturedly joined him, remarking--

"Ma foi, monsieur, don't be too sure of having us at the Spithead."

"Why not, if the wind holds good?"

"Some of our ships may retake us--aha!"

"No fear of that, mounseer; the sea at present is only open to _us_,"
was the composed reply.

Marin, who sat in a corner, imprecated his fate bitterly; he cursed
what he considered Eugene's squeamishness, which prevented him from
availing himself compulsorily of Quentin's aid to deceive the
_Medusa_; but consoled himself by the hope that "he would yet take it
out of the hides of those 'sacré Anglais,' in some fashion or other."

"Take up the slack of your jawing-tackle, Johnny," said the mid;
"drink your grog, shut up, and turn in; your ill luck to-night may be
mine to-morrow."

Madame de Ribeaupierre was greatly concerned by the turn her affairs
had taken; but at a time when the whole sea was covered by the
cruisers of the largest fleet in the world, it was strange that she
did not anticipate some such catastrophe.

When it was reported to the captain of the _Medusa_ that the wife of
General de Ribeaupierre was in the _Bien Aimé_, he politely offered
her the use of a cabin on board his ship; but having no wish to be
separated from Eugene, she continued in the privateer, with which the
frigate kept company for several days, until she saw her close in
shore under the white cliffs of Old England, when she brought her
starboard tacks on board, and, like a great eagle in search of fresh
prey, stood over towards the coast of France. Thus, on the evening of
the 16th of March, exactly two months after the battle of Corunna,
Quentin found the _Bien Aimé_ safely anchored at Spithead, close by
the guns of a line-of-battle ship.

There Eugene gave his parole, and Quentin found himself a free man!

The news spread rapidly in Portsmouth and in the Isle of Wight that
the wife and son of Bonaparte's favourite cavalry officer, the
Governor of Corunna, had been brought in as prisoners; and thus, on
the very day they were preparing to go on shore, escorted by Quentin,
a staff-officer, in full uniform, came fussily on board in a boat
pulled by marines.

Quentin recognised in him Lloyd Conyers, the aide-de-camp, whom he
had frequently seen in Spain.

He had come, he stated, "by direction of the General commanding in
the Isle of Wight, to invite Madame de Ribeaupierre, with her friends
and attendants, to share the hospitality of his house--to consider it
as her home, in fact, until she could make such arrangements as she
wished."

"Is the general married, monsieur?" asked madame, smiling; "for I am
not so very old."

"Madame, the general is married, and is nearer seventy than sixty,"
replied Conyers, laughing behind his great staff plume. "A boat is in
readiness, and a carriage awaits you on the beach. The general lives
at Minden Lodge, St. Helen's--we dine at half-past six."

Madame de Ribeaupierre, who was considerably crushed and crestfallen,
accepted the general's offer; and accompanied by her maid, who had
many misgivings and vague terrors of the natives, by her son and her
aide-de-camp, as she laughingly styled Quentin, landed in the Isle of
Wight; and for the first time in her life found herself treading
English ground.



CHAPTER XXIV.

MINDEN LODGE.

  "What thing is Love, which not can countervail
    Naught save itself? even such a thing is Love.
  And worldly wealth in worth as far doth fail,
    As lowest earth doth yield to heaven above.
  Divine is Love, and scorneth worldly pelf,
  And can be bought with nothing but with self."
                                          RALEIGH.


The month was only March; but in that southern portion of England,
the white daisy and the golden buttercup already spotted the green
sward; the hedge-rows nearly in full leaf, were quite like
bird-meadows, so full were they of song; while the coo of the
ring-dove and the wild pigeon were already heard in the copse.  The
gardens teemed with beautiful flowers, and the air was delicious, the
heat of the great white chalky cliffs being tempered by the breeze
from the deep blue sea.

When the three guests reached his residence at St. Helen's, the
general and all his suite were absent, at the inspection of the
parochial artillery; for even then, so lately as the days of Corunna,
the ancient custom of each parish in the Isle of Wight providing
itself with one small piece of cannon, usually a six-pounder, to be
kept in the church, or some small house built for the purpose close
by, was still in force; and the recent threats of invasion had made
the islanders somewhat expert as gunners, in handling their brigade
of some thirty field-pieces.

Built on an eminence at the pretty village of St.  Helen's, near the
mouth of the Bradinghaven, Minden Lodge was a spacious and handsome
mansion; and though the three visitors knew not the names of the
localities, from the lofty windows of the spacious and elegant
drawing-room, they had a fine view of Calshot Castle, of Portsmouth
steeped in sunny haze, about seven miles distant, its harbour crowded
with shipping; Spithead, with all the men-of-war at anchor, and the
little _Bien Aimé_, with the union-jack waving above her tricolour;
while far off in distance rose the taper spire of Chichester
Cathedral.

The rolling of carriage wheels upon gravel walks, the opening and
shutting of doors, announced the return of the general's party from
the inspection; but for a time no one appeared, and already the hands
of the ormolu clock indicated a quarter past six.

Madame had made rather an elaborate toilet; her maid had dressed and
powdered her fine hair to perfection, and she was in all the
amplitude of her flowered brocade and rich black lace, her antique
steel and diamond ornaments, a gift from the Grand Monarque to her
grandmother the Marquise de Louvre; Eugene had on the full uniform of
the 24th Chasseurs à Cheval, minus only his sword; Quentin felt
himself obliged to appear in some kind of uniform, too (mufti was
vulgar then), and so had carefully brushed up his old and worn-out
volunteer coat of the 25th, to which he added a pair of silver
epaulettes and a crimson sash, bought from a Jew of Corunna, who had
no doubt found them on the field.

They were sorely discoloured and torn; but he had the handsome gold
belt and the sabre of General Colbert--the gift of Moore.  Embrowned,
taller, fuller, manlier, and looking even more handsome than ever, he
was not astonished at being totally unrecognised; though he was
startled, and beyond description bewildered, when the familiar voice
of old Jack Andrews (who was clad in the Crawford livery), as he
threw open the drawing-room door, announced "Lord and Lady Rohallion,
Miss Warrender, _and_ Captain Conyers."

Looking not a day older, but rather younger and better than when he
had seen them last, Lord Rohallion entered in the full uniform of a
general officer, as orthodoxly powdered and pig-tailed as ever; Lady
Winifred in all the plenitude of her old-fashioned costume, with her
high-dressed hair puffed and white as snow, and looking, though
senior in years, somewhat the counterpart of Madame de Ribeaupierre,
her necklace and ornaments being equally antique, with opals and
diamonds that were _reversible_ in the course of an entertainment;
and there, too, was Flora, looking so charming, so dove-eyed, and
blooming, in full dress for dinner, but leaning on the arm of a
lisping and most-decidedly-too-attentive puppy of an aide-de-camp.

So confounded was Quentin by the sudden appearance of these four
persons, that he stood as if rooted to the carpet, unable to speak or
advance, while apologies were profusely made by Lord and Lady
Rohallion for their absence at the inspection on Bemerston Downs.

"You will make this house your home, my dear Madame de Ribeaupierre,"
said Lady Winifred, "until you choose to leave it for Paris----"

"We shall be in no hurry arranging the cartel for that," said Lord
Rohallion; "though I have no doubt," he added to Eugene, "you will be
impatient to rejoin your regiment--light cavalry, I think?"  Eugene
bowed very low; "and this gentleman----"

"Monsieur Kennedy--a name once very dear to me," said Madame de
Ribeaupierre, presenting Quentin; "and dearer now again for the
services he and my Eugene have performed for each other."

Lord Rohallion bowed, and shook the hand of Quentin cordially, but
did not remark his features particularly, till the expression of
astonishment and joy, half mingled by doubt and fear, which he saw,
while surveying alternately the faces of Flora and Lady Winifred,
attracted all his attention.

"Quentin--Quentin Kennedy!" they exclaimed together.  Flora seemed
tottering and deadly pale; but Lady Rohallion threw herself into his
arms, and sobbed hysterically.

Conyers played with the tassels of his sash, and thought himself
decidedly in the way....

Brief and rapid were the questions asked, and explanations given now;
other guests came crowding in till the dinner-party was complete, and
Jack Andrews made the gong send its thunder from the vestibule: thus
they were compelled to compose themselves, nor indulge in that which
well-bred English society so eminently abhors--a scene.

"I was thought too old to command a brigade in the field, Quentin,"
said Lord Rohallion, shaking the hand of his young friend, at least
for the sixth time; "so the Duke of York kindly sent me to this quiet
place.  If the flat-bottomed boats ever leave Boulogne, they will
find me, however, at my post; and, egad!  I hope to show them there
is life in the old dog yet!"

Conyers, the aide, who no doubt usually acted as esquire to la belle
Flora, was considerably put out--disgusted, in fact--when he found
her completely appropriated by another; while he was compelled to
offer his arm to the buxom wife of an adjutant of a Veteran battalion.

"Flora!"

"Quentin!"

They had no other words for each other, even in whispers, as they
went mechanically to the dining-room, where all the cold formality of
a grand state dinner was to be enacted and endured.

A strange throbbing thrill ran through Quentin's heart, as memory
went back to that last meeting in the sycamore avenue, and _the last
kiss_ given there, as he seemed with the touch of her hand to take up
the long-dropped link of a life that had passed away--his boyish life
of joy and love at Rohallion--long dropped, but never forgotten!

They were young, but, strange to say, in their instance, separation
for a time, instead of cooling, strengthened their mutual regard; and
when Flora spoke, the old familiar sound of her soft and beloved
voice made the tender link complete.

She drew off her glove and smilingly held up a little white hand.
There was but one ring on it--the diamond gift of Madame de
Ribeaupierre, sent at a time when Quentin had no other gift to send;
and the curious history of it afforded them ample conversation during
dinner.  As for Eugene, who sat opposite, he seemed immensely
consoled, under his unhappy circumstances, by a blue-eyed and fair
ringleted daughter of the Commissary General from Newport, that young
lady's patriotic animosity to France seeming in no way to extend to a
handsome young fellow in the green coat lapelled with white of the
24th Chasseurs à Cheval; so thus the daughter of "la perfide Albion"
had it all her own way.

Then the old General and Madame de Ribeaupierre were, as Eugene
phrased it in the French camp style, "like a couple of
_fourbisseurs_," they sat with their powdered heads so close
together; but they were deep in recollections of the old court of the
Bourbons, of the Scoto-French alliance, of the days of the monarchy,
all of which Eugene was wont to stigmatize as "the rubbish of the
world before the flood," for he was one of those young men who
wisely, perhaps, don't see much use in looking back at any time.

Lady Rohallion had, of course, innumerable questions to ask
concerning Cosmo; but, kept so distantly aloof as he had been by that
uncompromising personage, Quentin found great difficulty in
satisfying the anxious mother.  Then Lord Rohallion asked many a
question concerning the old Borderers; but as Quentin's battalion had
been the second, and was consequently a new one, he had some
difficulty in satisfying all his inquiries.

Fresh from foreign service and the seat of war, whence some rather
exaggerated stories of scrapes and perils had preceded him, Quentin
experienced all the intense boredom of finding himself "an object of
interest."  This annoyance was all the greater, that he was absorbing
and absorbed by Flora, the heiress, the general's beautiful and
wealthy ward, who had already turned the heads of all the hard-up
fellows in the adjacent garrison towns.

All things have an end; even the longest and most stately of dinners,
so in due time the ladies retired to the drawing-room.  As Madame de
Ribeaupierre passed Quentin, her cheek was flushed with pleasure and
gratified pride by the attention she had received from the courtly
old lord--that noble pair d'Ecosse; her eyes were bright, and she
still looked indeed beautiful.

"Ah, my child, Quentin, I can see what I can see," she whispered; "it
is she whom you love, then?"

"Yes, madame, most dearly," said Quentin, smiling.

"C'est un ange! and I shall always love her, too!" exclaimed the
impulsive Frenchwoman, as she kissed Flora's blushing cheek.

"Quentin, follow us soon," said the latter, tapping him with her fan;
"I want to hear more about that Spanish lady at the Villa de Maciera."

The gentlemen lingered over their wine; much "shop and pipeclay" were
talked, with reserve, however, as Eugene was present; but the merits
of the new shako, and the probability of the expected brevet, were as
usual fully discussed.  The first to join the ladies in the
drawing-room was Quentin, who felt very much as if in a dream, from
which he might waken to find himself in the cabin of the _Bien Aimé_,
in the Villa de Orsan, or, worse still, in some comfortless bivouac
in Estremadura; and glad were these united friends when the guests
had taken their leave, and they were all left to themselves in the
drawing-room.

Much conversation and many explanations ensued; and a very simple
remark, by stirring a certain chord of memory, was the happy means of
bringing about a very unexpected revelation or dénouement--one,
indeed, so remarkable as to deserve a chapter to itself.



CHAPTER XXV.

THE REVELATIONS OF A NIGHT.

  "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
    Old Time is still a-flying;
  And this same flower that smiles to-day,
    To-morrow will be dying.
  Then be not coy, but use your time,
    And while you may, go marry;
  For having lost but once your prime,
    You may for ever tarry."--HERRICK.


"It has come strangely about, Madame Rohallion, how my son Eugene,
and your--your friend, Mr. Kennedy, have met during the contingencies
of service in Spain," said Madame de Ribeaupierre; "and it is all the
more strange that my name was once Kennedy."

We are sorry to say that the good lady pronounced it Kinnidee.

"Yours, madame?"

"My first husband was so named."

"Madame has then been twice married?"

"Yes; and Eugene is the only son of the general's first wife, for he
has been twice married, too," said Madame Ribeaupierre, with one of
her merry little laughs.

"But I have always loved you, madame, as my mother," said the young
officer.

"Indeed, child, you never knew any other," replied madame, as Eugene
kissed her forehead very affectionately.

"Then was your first husband a Scotsman?" asked Lord Rohallion.

"He was, monsieur le general, a captain in the King's service during
the monarchy."

"Was he killed in action, madame?"

"No, poor man--he was drowned at sea."

"In what year was this?"

"Alas! it was in 1798."

A keen, bright glance was exchanged by Lord and Lady Rohallion on
hearing this; a light seemed to break upon their minds simultaneously.

"Madame, pardon me," said the lady, very hurriedly, "but may I
enquire what is your Christian name?"

"Josephine."

"Josephine!"

"Yes, madame.  I was named at the font, Josephine St. Marie Duré de
Lusart."

"Good heavens, my lord, if it should be so!" exclaimed Lady
Rohallion, hurrying to her escritoire and bringing forth an old faded
and yellow packet, from which she took a ring--the same that had been
found on Quentin's father.  It bore, as we have stated elsewhere, the
name of Josephine graven on the gold, and a crest, a demi-griffin cut
on an amethyst.

"This ring, madame--this ring--where did it come from?  It was my
mother's gift to my first husband, Captain Kennedy, of the Scottish
regiment de Berwick, in the service of France; and this letter,"
continued Madame de Ribeaupierre, with increasing agitation, "this
letter was mine--mine, written to him after he had left me with our
child to return to his own country, whither I was to follow him----"

"And this commission, madame?"

"Was his--was his," she exclaimed, becoming deeply excited, as she
pressed to her lips the signature of Louis XVI.  "How came it here?
And this letter, too, of Monsieur le Comte d'Artois, written to him
after the campaigns on the Meuse and Rhine?"

"They were found in the pocket-book of Quentin's father, when he was
cast drowned on the beach, with him, then a little child, senseless
and benumbed by cold," said Lady Rohallion, with one arm placed
caressingly round the Frenchwoman's neck, and with her eyes full of
tears, as the wild and stormy night on which our story opened came
back to memory.

Madame Ribeaupierre became quite hysterical.

"My son--you? oh, mon Dieu! mon Dieu! and this was your secret at the
Villa de Orsan," she exclaimed, in a very touching voice, as she
pressed to her breast the somewhat bewildered Quentin, who, having
been deeply engaged with Flora, had heard not a word of the foregoing
conversation.

After a time, however, she related that her husband, who had left
Scotland in consequence of some quarrel, she believed, with his own
family, had taken his mother's name of Kennedy, and entered the
regiment de Berwick, in which he faithfully served the French
monarchy, even after it was completely shattered by the Revolution.

That, on a rumour rising that Monsieur, then residing at Holyrood,
was about to reconstitute the Hundred Scottish Guards, with consent
of the British Government, he departed hurriedly from France, leaving
her at Arques, with her mother, Madame Duré de Lusart, who was then
on her death-bed.  Accompanied by the Abbé Lebrun, an old friend, he
set out for Scotland, taking with him their little son.  She added,
that the vessel in which they sailed was a Scottish brig, under
cartel, and bound for the Clyde; but it was, nevertheless, attacked
by a French privateer, off the coast of Britain somewhere--where she
knew not--but far to the north.  The vessel was driven on a rock, and
all perished save the Abbé Lebrun, who saw both her husband and child
sink into the waves and die together.

More fortunate, M. l'Abbé floated out to sea upon a spar, and was
picked up next morning, in a most exhausted condition, by the same
privateer which had done all the mischief.

Notwithstanding all the skill of the great Doctor Thiebault, who came
from Paris, her mother died, and now she found herself childless and
alone in France--the terrible France of the Republic--and where she
was hourly in peril of the guillotine as an aristocrat.

The Bastile had been razed to the ground; that was good; but the
change that had come over France was not for the better; "the gilded
coach, the red-heeled slipper, and the supper of the Regency; the
powdered marquise, for a smile of whose dimpled mouth the deadly
rapier flashed in the moonlight--the perfumed beauty, for one of
whose glances a poet would have ransacked his brain to render it
smoothly in verse;" the high-bred old courtier, the gilded salon--had
all given place to regiments of sans-culottes, to assassins, and the
sovereign people--to the République démocratique et sociale; to
planting trees of liberty, and grape-shotting the mob; to sham Roman
citizens and tribunes; to women debating the existence of a God, and
dancing nude in the fêtes of Venus; to a France of heroes and
madmen--a Paris of "monkeys and tigers!"

Her country had become intolerable to her; she was long in despair,
she said, and but for the kindness and love of her friend, Marie de
Ribeaupierre, a chauoinesse of the Chapter of Salles, in Beaujolais,
she must have sunk under the loss of all her friends; but after a
time Marie's brother came; he was then a captain in the regiment of
La Fere, a handsome man, and in the prime of life, and, happily for
himself, stood high in the favour of Citizen Bonaparte.  In the end,
she added, with a little smile and a very faint blush, she learned to
love him.  They were married, and then she strove to console herself
for the loss of her own child by making a pet of his, the little
Eugene.

"Ah, mon Dieu! mon Dieu!" she exclaimed, "what subtle instinct was
this? what mysterious voice was that which whispered in my heart to
love you, Quentin?  I have only learned your name to-night; but how
often did I ask of myself, at the Villa de Orsan, what is this
stranger--this young Scottish officer--to me, that I should feel so
deeply interested in him?  Oh, Ribeaupierre, my dear husband, what a
strange story I shall have to tell you!  That he, for whom I prayed
nightly, and thanked God for saving the life of _your_ son Eugene,
proves to be mine--the child of my own bosom--my long-lost little
Quentin!  Truly the hand of a kind and blessed Providence has been in
all this!"

After she became a little more composed, she desired her maid to
bring from her dressing-table a casket, which she unlocked, saying
that she would show Quentin a miniature of his father--a relic on
which she had not looked for many a day; and he gazed on it with
eager, earnest, and mournful tenderness.

It was the face of a dark-complexioned and thoughtful-looking young
man, with his hair simply tied by a blue ribbon; there was a singular
combination of mildness, sadness, and softness in the features and
their expression; but when it was handed to Lady Rohallion, a sharp
little cry, as if of pain, escaped her.

"Reynold--my lord--look here--you know this face!" she exclaimed.

"My brother Ranulph, for a thousand guineas!  Why, madame, this is a
miniature of my brother Ranulph Crawford, who was killed, we were
told, in the defence of the Tuileries."

"No--no--impossible! impossible!  Captain Crawford who fell there was
our dear friend--he commanded the grenadiers of the regiment de
Berwick.  My husband took, I know not why, his mother's name in
France; and that miniature he hung round my neck on the day we were
married in Arques by the good Abbé Lebrun."

"I can swear that it was painted for me, about three years after
Minden, by honest David Allan of Alloa, whose name should be within
it."

"True, monsieur, behold!" she added, opening the locket by a spring;
"there is the name of Monsieur Allan, and this is Quentin's hair,
when it was the colour of gold, woven up with--with his poor
father's."

"This is wonder upon wonder!" exclaimed Flora Warrender, as she hung
on the neck of Madame de Ribeaupierre, who kept the right hand of
Quentin pressed upon her heart, while Eugene, who stood by, was
stroking his moustache, and thinking if he had anything to do in the
way of kissing, he would certainly prefer Flora.

Lady Rohallion was silent.

So the boy, by whose cradle in infancy she had watched with such
motherly solicitude, was the nephew of her husband, the cousin-german
of Cosmo; the son of that younger brother who had been the first love
of her girlish days--the worshipper of her girlish beauty, in the
pleasant times long past in sunny Nithsdale, the courtly gentleman
and gallant soldier of fortune, over whose life she had cast a
shadow.  It was a strange mystery!

Some such idea was passing in the mind of her husband.

"Good heavens, Winny! so that poor father, whose fate is yet a legend
among our tenantry--the poor man who struggled so bravely to save his
child, when the ship was shattered on the Partan Craig--who died in
sight of Rohallion, and whom honest John Girvan buried as became a
soldier in the old kirkyard--our own ancestral burying-place--was my
dear brother Ranulph!" exclaimed Lord Rohallion, with a sudden gush
of affection and emotion; "and 'tis his boy we have so loved and
protected, Winny!  Poor Ranulph--poor Ranulph!  I should like to have
looked on your handsome and honest face once again ere it was laid in
the grave; but it could not be, for I was absent.  Madame, do you
know that his drowned corpse was carried forth by his father's people
from the gate of the house in which he was born, and every room of
which has echoed to his voice in boyhood, and past the very haunts in
which we played together, under the old sycamores of the avenue, by
the Lollards' Linn and the Kelpie's Pool, on the Girvan Water.  Thank
God, poor Ranulph, you found a grave at last among your own people,
and where your forefathers lie; but we have much to make amends for,"
added the old Lord, as he placed Flora's hand in that of Quentin;
"may you both live long to enjoy all the happiness you deserve; and
be assured that my last prayer will be for both of you!"

* * * *

What follows?

Orange wreaths and snow-white satin dresses, kid gloves and wedding
favours, compliments and kisses, a marriage settlement and so forth,
were all the subjects for mature consideration ere long at Minden
Lodge; and within a month Quentin _Crawford_--he had to change his
name, as well as Flora--departed with his bride to spend the
honeymoon among the green summer woods and purple heather braes of
Rohallion; and joyful indeed was the salute that pealed from the guns
on the battery--whilome those of La Bonne Citoyenne under the
direction of the old quartermaster, who concluded by a general salvo
that scared the rooks from the keep, sent the seabirds screaming in
flocks to the Partan Craig, and made the dominie jump a yard high in
his square-toed shoes; and red and rousing were the bonfires that
blazed on the old castle rock and on the heights of Ardgour in honour
of the day.

Cosmo, we have said, was enjoying the seclusion and safety from duns
afforded by the fortress of Verdun, where we have no wish to disturb
him.

Monkton, long since retired upon full pay as colonel, is still one of
the most popular members of the Caledonian U.S. Club; but poor old
Middleton died a lieutenant-general some years ago, near his native
place, the secluded village of the Stennis, in Lothian.  The old
watch, which was the providential means of saving his life in action,
he never had repaired; but it always hung above his mantelpiece with
the bullet in it, for he said that no clock in the land could ever
remind him so well of time and eternity.

Donna Isidora accompanied the French troops to Paris, and made a
tremendous sensation as a Spanish opera-dancer.  In London she became
the rage, and, as _La Fille de l'Air_, her benefits were ably puffed
and conducted by her secretary, whose name always figured in the
bills as El Senor Trevino.

Old John Girvan "sleeps the sleep that knows no waking" in the green
kirkyard of Rohallion; but he lived to dandle a young Quentin on his
knee, and to hear the dominie teach a little Flora to lisp her first
letters under the old oak-trees of Ardgour.

Eugene de Ribeaupierre, now one of the generals of the second Empire,
has lived to lead his division of cavalry at Inkerman and the
Tchernaya, at Solferino and Magenta, as bravely as ever his father
did at Corunna, at Austerlitz, or Smolensko, in the wars of Napoleon
the First.



THE END.





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