The adjutant general returned in two or three minutes.  
"Will you please come this way, Colonel O'Connor," he said, as he re-entered the room; "the commander-in-chief wishes to speak to you."
 
"I am glad to see you back, Colonel O'Connor," Lord Wellington said cordially, but in his usual quick, short manner; "the last time I saw you was at Salamende. You did well at Talavera; and better still afterwards, when the information I received from you was the only trustworthy news obtained during the campaign, and was simply invaluable. Sir John Craddock did me no better service than by recognizing your merits, and speaking so strongly to me in your favour that I retained you in command of the corps that you had raised. I shall be glad to know that you are again at their head, when the campaign reopens; for I know that I can rely implicitly upon you for information. Of course, your name has been removed from the list of my staff, since you were taken prisoner; but it shall appear in orders tomorrow again. I shall be glad if you will dine with me, this evening."
 
"I wish I had a few more young officers like that," he said to the adjutant general, when Terence had bowed and retired. "He is full of energy, and ready to undertake any wild adventure, and yet he is as prudent and thoughtful as most men double his age. I like his face. He has a right to be proud of the position he has won, but there is not the least nonsense about him, and he evidently has no idea that he has done anything out of the ordinary course. At first sight he looks a mere good-tempered lad, but the lower part of his face is marked by such resolution and firmness that it goes far to explain why he has succeeded."
 
There were but four other officers dining with the commander-in-chief that evening. Lord Wellington asked Terence several questions as to the route the convoy of prisoners had followed, the treatment they had received, and the nature of the roads, and whether the Spanish guerillas were in force. Terence gave a brief account of the attack that had been made on the French convoy, and the share that he and his fellow prisoners had taken in the affair; at which Lord Wellington's usually impassive face lighted up with a smile.
 
"That was a somewhat irregular proceeding, Colonel O'Connor."
 
"I am afraid so, sir; but after their treatment by the Spaniards when in the hospital at Talavera, our men were so furious against them that I believe they would have fought them, even had I endeavoured to hold them back; which, indeed, being a prisoner, I do not know that I should have had any authority to do."
 
"And how did you escape from Bayonne?" the general asked.
 
"Through the good offices of some of the soldiers who had been our escort, sir. They were on duty as a prison guard and, being grateful for the help that we had given them in the affair with the guerillas, they aided me to escape."
 
"And how did you manage afterwards?"
 
Terence related very briefly the adventures that he and his companion had had, before at last reaching Jersey.
 
On leaving, the adjutant general requested him to call in the morning before starting to rejoin his regiment, as he expressed his intention of doing. The talk was a long and friendly one, the adjutant general asking many questions as to the constitution of his corps.
 
"There is one thing I should like very much, sir," Terence said, after he had finished, "it would be a great assistance to me if I had an English officer, as adjutant."
 
"Do you mean one for each battalion, or one for the two?"
 
"I think that one for both battalions would answer the purpose, sir. It would certainly be of great assistance to me, and take a great many details off my hands."
 
"I certainly think that you do need assistance. Is there any one you would specially wish to be appointed?"
 
"I should be very glad to have Lieutenant Ryan, who has been with me on my late journey. We are old friends, as I was in the Mayo regiment with him. He speaks Portuguese very fairly. Of course, it would be useless for me to have an officer who did not do so. I should certainly prefer him to anyone else."
 
"That is easily managed," the officer replied. "I will put him in orders, today, as appointed adjutant to the Minho Portuguese regiment, with the acting rank of captain. I will send a note to Lord Beresford, stating the reason for the appointment for, as you and your officers owe your local rank to him, he may feel that he ought to have been specially informed of Ryan's appointment; although your corps is in no way under his orders, but acting with the British army."
 
"I am very much obliged to you, indeed, sir. It will be a great comfort to me to have an adjutant, and it will naturally be much more pleasant to have one upon whom I know I can depend absolutely. Indeed, I have been rather in an isolated position, so far. The majors of the two battalions naturally associate with their own officers, consequently Colonel Herrara has been my only intimate friend and, although he is a very good fellow, one longs sometimes for the companionship of a brother Englishman."
 
Terence had not told Dick Ryan of his intention to ask for him as his adjutant. When he joined him at the hotel, he saluted him with:
 
"Well, Captain Ryan, have you everything ready for the start?"
 
"I have, General," Dick replied with a grin, "or perhaps I ought to say Field Marshal."
 
"Not yet, Dicky, not yet; and indeed, possibly I am premature myself, in addressing you as Captain."
 
"Rather; I should say I have a good many steps to make, before I get my company."
 
"Well, Dick, I can tell you that, when the orders come out today, you will see your name among them as appointed adjutant to the Minho Portuguese regiment, with acting rank as captain."
 
"Hurrah!" Ryan shouted. "You don't say that you have managed it, old fellow? I am delighted. This is glorious. I am awfully obliged to you."
 
"I think, Dick, we will make up our minds not to start until this evening. You know we had arranged to hire a vehicle, and that I should get a horse when I joined; but I think now we may as well buy the horses at once, for of course you will be mounted, too. We might pay a little more for them, but we should save the expense of the carriage."
 
"That would be much better," Dick said. "Let us go and get them, at once. There must be plenty of horses for sale in a place like this and, as we are both flush of money, I should think that a couple of hours would do it."
 
"I hope it will. As I told them at headquarters that I was going to start today, I should not like any of them to run across me here this evening. No doubt the landlord of the hotel can tell us of some man who keeps the sort of animals we want. The saddlery we shall have no difficulty about."
 
Two hours later a couple of serviceable horses had been bought; with saddles, bridles, holsters, and valises. In the last named were packed necessaries for the journey, and each provided himself with a brace of double-barrelled pistols. The rest of their effects were packed in the trunks they had bought at Jersey, and were handed over to a Portuguese firm of carriers, to be sent up to the regiment.
 
At two o'clock they mounted and rode to Sobral. The next day they rode to Santarem, and on the following evening to Abrantes. They here learned that their corps was in camp, with two other Portuguese regiments, four miles higher up the river. As it was dark when they arrived at Abrantes, they agreed to sleep there and go on the next morning; as Terence wished to report himself to General Hill, to whose division the regiment was attached, until operations should commence in the spring.
 
They put up at an inn and, having eaten a meal, walked out into the town, which was full of British soldiers. They were not long before they found the cafe that was set apart for the use of officers and, on entering, Terence at once joined a party of three, belonging to a regiment with all of whose officers he was acquainted, as they had been encamped next to the Mayo Fusiliers during the long months preceding the advance up the valley of the Tagus. Ryan was, of course, equally known to them; and the three officers rose, with an exclamation of surprise, as the newcomers walked up to the table.
 
"Why, O'Connor! How in the world did you get here? How are you, Ryan? I thought that you were both prisoners."
 
"So we were," Terence said, "but as you see, we gave them the slip, and here we are."
 
They drew up chairs to the little table.
 
"You may consider yourself lucky in your regiment being on the river, O'Connor. You will be much better off than Ryan will be, at Portalegre."
 
"I am seconded," Ryan said, "and have been appointed O'Connor's adjutant, with the temporary rank of captain."
 
"I congratulate you. The chances are you will have a much better time of it than if you were with your own regiment. I don't mean now, but when the campaign begins in the spring. O'Connor always seems to be in the thick of it, while our division may remain here, while the fighting is going on somewhere else. Besides, he always manages to dine a good deal better than we do. His fellows, being Portuguese, are able to get supplies, when the peasants are all ready to take their oath that they have not so much as a loaf of bread or a fowl in their village.
 
"How will you manage to get on with them, Ryan, without speaking their language? Oh! I remember, you were grinding up Portuguese all the spring, so I suppose you can get on pretty well, now."
 
"Yes; O'Connor promised that he would ask for me, as soon as I could speak the language, so I stuck at it hard; and now, you see, I have got my reward."
 
"I can tell you that the troops, here, are a good deal better off than they are elsewhere. There is a fearful want of land carriage, but we get our supplies up by boats. That is why the Portuguese regiments are encamped on the river.
 
"Well, how did you get away from the French? It is curious that when I saw O'Grady last--which was a fortnight ago, when he came in to get a conveyance to take over sundry cases of whisky that had come up the river, for the use of his mess--he said:
 
"'I expect that O'Connor and Dick Ryan will turn up here, before the spring. I am sure they will, if they have got together.'"
 
"It is too long a story to tell, here," Ryan said. "It is full of hairbreadth escapes, dangers by sea and land, and ends up with a naval battle."
 
The officers laughed.
 
"Well, will you come to our quarters?" one of them said. "We have got some decent wine, and some really good cigars which came up from Lisbon last week, and there are lots of our fellows who will be glad to see you."
 
They accordingly adjourned to a large building where the officers of the regiment were quartered and, in the apartment that had been turned into a mess room, they found a dozen officers, all of whom were known both to Terence and Ryan. After many questions were asked and answered on both sides, Ryan was requested to tell the story of their adventures after being taken prisoners. He told it in an exaggerated style that elicited roars of laughter, making the most of what he called The Battle of the Shirt Sleeves with the guerillas; exaggerating the dangers of his escape, and the horrors of their imprisonment, for a week, among the sails and nets.
 
"O'Connor," he said, "has hardly got back his sense of smell yet. The stink of tar, mixed with fishy odours, will be vivid in my remembrance for the rest of my life."
 
When he had at last finished, one of them said:
 
"And now, how much of all this is true, Ryan?"
 
"Every fact is just as I have told it," he replied gravely. "You may think that I have exaggerated, for did an Irishman ever tell a story, without exaggeration? But I give you my honour that never did one keep nearer to the truth than I have done. I don't say that the fisherman's wife took quite such a strong fancy to me as I have stated, although she can hardly have been insensible to my personal advantages; but really, otherwise, I don't know that I have diverged far from the narrow path of truth. I tell you, those two days that we were running before that gale was a thing I never wish to go through again."
 
"And you really tied up the Maire of Granville, Ryan?"
 
"We did so," Dicky said, "and a miserable object the poor little fat man looked, as he sat in his chair trussed up like a fowl."
 
"And now, about the sea fight, Ryan?"
 
"Every word was as it happened. O'Connor and I turned gunners, and very decent shots we made, too; and a proof of it was that, if we would have taken it, I believe the captain of the schooner would have given us half the booty found in the lugger's hold; but we were modest and self denying, and contented ourselves with a third, each, of the cash found in the captain's cabin; which we could not have refused if we wanted to, the captain made such a point of it. It came to nearly three hundred pounds apiece; and mighty useful it was, for we had, of course, to get new uniforms and rigs out, and horses and saddlery at Lisbon. I don't know what I should have done without it, for my family's finances would not have stood my drawing upon them; and another mortgage would have ruined them, entirely."
 
"Well, certainly, that is a substantial proof of the truth of that incident in your story; but I think that, rather than have passed forty-eight hours in that storm, I would have stopped at Bayonne and taken my chance of exchange."
 
"Then I am afraid, Forester, that you are deficient in martial ardour," Terence said gravely. "Our desire to be back fighting the French was so great that no dangers would have appalled us."
 
There was a general laugh.
 
"Well, at any rate, you managed uncommonly well, Ryan, whether it was martial ardour that animated you or not; and O'Grady was not far wrong when he said that you and O'Connor would creep out through a mouse's hole, if there was no other way of doing it."
 
"Now, what has been doing since we have been away?" Terence asked.
 
"Well, to begin with, all Andalusia has been captured by Soult. Suchet has occupied Valencia. Lerida was captured by him, after a scandalously weak resistance; for there were over nine thousand troops there, and the place surrendered after only 1000 had fallen. Gerona, on the other hand, was only captured by Augereau after a resistance as gallant as that of Saragossa.
 
"That is the extraordinary thing about these Spaniards. Sometimes they show themselves cowardly beyond expression, at others they fight like heroes. Just at present, even the Juntas do not pretend that they have an army capable of driving the French out of the Pyrenees; which is a comfort, for we shall have to rely upon ourselves and not be humbugged by the Spaniards, the worthlessness of whose promises, Lord Wellington has ascertained, by bitter experience. The Portuguese government is as troublesome and as truthless as that of Spain, but Wellington is able to hold his own with them; and there is little doubt that the regular regiments will fight, and be really of valuable assistance to us; but these have been raised in spite of the constant opposition of the Junta at Lisbon.
 
"There is no doubt that the next campaign will be a hot one for, now that Spain has been as completely subdued as such vainglorious, excitable people can be subdued, the French marshals are free to join against us; and it is hard to see how, with but 30,000 men, we are going to defend Portugal against ten times that number of French. Still, I suppose we shall do it, somehow. The French have a large army on the other side of the Aqueda, and there is no doubt they will besiege Ciudad Rodrigo, as soon as winter is over. I doubt whether we shall be strong enough to march to its relief, and I fancy that i............