Jack, with his two troopers, rode away from the hospitable cottage of the priest in high spirits. He determined to avoid Saragossa, as he was not charged with any direct mission from the earl, and wished, therefore, to avoid any official intercourse with the leaders of the province. As soon as the marshal had marched, the people there had risen, had driven out the small French garrison left, and had resumed the management of their own affairs. Jack learned, however, that the city had not formally declared for King Charles. As the priest had told him would be the case, Jack encountered no bodies of armed men during the day; the country had a peaceful aspect, the peasants were working in the fields, and at the villages through which he passed the English uniforms excited a feeling of curiosity rather than of interest. He stopped at several of these and entered into conversation with the inhabitants. He found everywhere an intense hatred of the French prevailing, while but little interest was evinced in the respective claims of Charles and Philip. After a very long ride he arrived, at nightfall, near the spot to which he was bound. In this neighborhood he observed a greater amount of watchfulness and preparation than had prevailed elsewhere. The men, for the most part, remained in their villages, and went about armed. Jack learned that an inroad by the Miquelets of Castile was deemed probable, and that it was thought possible that another French force might follow Tesse from Madrid to Barcelona.
It was late in the evening before Jack reached his destination, where, on his presenting his letter of introduction, he was most heartily received by the priest.
“Father Ignacio tells me,” he said when he had read it, “that you are not only to be welcomed as an officer of the great English general, but that you are in every way deserving of friendship; he adds, too, that you are a first rate judge of wine, and that you can be trusted as an adviser upon knotty and difficult matters.”
Jack laughed. “I only gave the good father my advice upon two points,” he said; “the first was the admitting to terms of surrender of a body of French troops with whom he was engaged in battle when I arrived; the second was upon the important question of broaching or not broaching a hogshead of particularly good wine.”
“If you advised that the hogshead should be broached,” the priest said, smiling, “I can warrant that my good brother Ignacio followed your advice, and can well understand the respect in which he seems to hold your judgment. But do not let us stand talking here.
“Your men will find a stable behind the house where they can stand the horses. Alas! it is uninhabited at present, for my mule, the gentlest and best in the province, was requisitioned—which is another word for stolen—by the French as they passed through. My faithful beast! I miss her every hour of the day, and I doubt not that she misses me still more sorely. Tell me, senor, my brother Ignacio writes me that he has captured many animals from the French—was Margaretta among them? She was a large mule, and in good condition; indeed, there was some flesh on her bones. She was a dark chestnut with a white star on the forehead, a little white on her fore feet, and white below the hocks on the hind legs; she had a soft eye, and a peculiar twist in jerking her tail.”
The manner of the priest was so earnest that Jack repressed a smile with difficulty.
“I did notice among the mules in one of the wagons one marked somewhat similarly to your description, and, if I mistake not, it, with another, fell to the share of the good priest; but I cannot say that it had much flesh upon its bones; indeed, it was in very poor case. Nor did I notice that its eyes were particularly soft, or that there was any peculiarity in the twitching of its tail.”
“It may be Margaretta,” the priest said with some excitement; “the poor beast would naturally lose flesh in the hands of the French, while as to the switch in the tail, it was a sign of welcome which she gave me when I took an apple or a piece of bread into her stable, and she would not be likely so to greet strangers. I will lose no time in writing to Ignacio to inquire further into the matter. Verily, it seems to me as if the saint had sent you specially here as a bearer of this good news.”
Jack spent a pleasant evening with the priest, and learned much as to the state of things upon the frontier. The priest represented the Castilians as bitterly opposed to the claims of Charles; they had no grievances against the French, who had behaved with strict discipline in that province, and had only commenced their excesses upon crossing the frontier into Arragon. This they regarded, though wrongfully, as a hostile country; for, previous to their arrival, the people there had taken no part either way in the struggle, but the overbearing manner of Tesse, and the lax discipline of his troops, had speedily caused an intense feeling of irritation. Resistance had been offered to foraging parties of the French army, and the terrible vengeance which had been taken by Tesse for these acts had roused the whole province in a flame of insurrection.
“There are several bodies of French cavalry across the frontier,” the priest said; “occasionally they make flying raids into Arragon, but, as you see, the people are armed, and prepared, and ready to give them a hot reception. The Castilians are like ourselves; if at any time an army should march in this direction against Madrid, the Miquelets will oppose them just as we should oppose the French, but they will not leave their homes to interfere with us, for they know well enough that did they do so we also should cross the line, and fire and destruction would be carried through all the villages on both sides of the border. So at present there is nothing to fear from Castile, but if your English general were to drive the French out of the country, he would have hard work ere he overcame the resistance of that province.”
Just as day was breaking the next morning Jack was aroused by shouts in the streets, followed by the heavy trampling of horse. He sprang from the bed and threw on his cloak; as he was buckling on his sword one of the dragoons rushed into his room.
“We are surrounded, sir! I have just looked out, and there are French cavalry all round the house.”
As he spoke there was a tremendous knocking at the door. The priest ran into the room. “We are betrayed,” he said; “some one must have carried away the news last night of your arrival here, and it has come to the ears of the French cavalry on the other side. I ordered some men out last night to watch the road across the border, but the enemy must have ridden too fast for them to get here first.”
“It cannot be helped,” Jack said; “you had best open the door, or they will break it in in another minute. Make no resistance, lads,” he said to the dragoons, for the second orderly had now joined them; “lay your swords down on the bed; we are caught this time, and must make our escape when we can. It is better, anyhow, to have fallen into the hands of the French than of the Spanish.”
The sound of the knocking had ceased now, and there was a trampling and clamor of voices as the French soldiers poured into the house. Steps were heard ascending the stairs, the door opened, and the priest, accompanied by a French officer and followed by a number of soldiers, entered the room.
“You are my prisoner, sir,” the French officer said.
“I am afraid there is no doubt of that,” Jack said, speaking in Spanish; “here is my sword, sir. These two men are my orderlies, and, of course, also surrender. You will observe that we are all in uniform, that we are taken on the soil of Arragon, and that I am here in pursuance of my duty as an officer of the English army.”
“You are alone?” the officer asked.
“Yes,” Jack said; “there are, so far as I know, no other British but ourselves in Arragon.”
“Then we were misinformed,” the officer said; “the news was received last night that the Earl of Peterborough was himself here; and although it was but in the afternoon that we had heard that your general was at Valencia, his movements are so swift and erratic that, if we heard of him in Portugal one hour we should not be surprised to find him here the next.” He stopped as shots were heard fired in the streets.
“You must excuse ceremony, sir,” he said, “and mount at once with your men and accompany me. In ten minutes we shall have the whole country buzzing round us like wasps; and now that the object of my ride is accomplished, I don't wish to throw away my men's lives.”
The horses were saddled without loss of time, and in two or three minutes Jack was trotting down the village in the midst of the French cavalry amid a scathing fire from behind the houses and walls.
The French officer rode at the head of his troop till well beyond the village, then reining in his horse, joined his prisoner.
“And now,” he asked, “whom have I the honor of capturing?”
“I am Captain Stilwell,” Jack replied, “one of the Earl of Peterborough's aides de camp.”
“I am Captain de Courcy,” the French officer said; “happily, although the French and English have taken opposite sides on this question, we can esteem and honor each other as brave and civilized adversaries. As for these Spanish scoundrels, they are no better than banditti; they murder us in our beds, they poison our wine, they as often as not burn us alive if we fall into their hands; they are savages, neither more nor less; and why Philip of Anjou, who could have had all the pleasures of life as a prince of the blood at Versailles, should covet the kingship of this country, passes my understanding. And now tell me about that paladin, your general. Peste, what a man! And you are one of his aides de camp? Why, if he drags you about everywhere with him, you must lead the life of a dog.”
“When I last heard of the general he was at Valencia,” Jack said. “But that was ten days since.”
“Ten days!” the Frenchman said; “then by now he may be in London, or in Rome, or at Paris.”
“With the wind favoring him he might be at Rome, but he could scarcely have arrived at either London or Paris.”
“There is no saying,” the French officer laughed. “Has he not three leagued boots, and can he not step from mountain to mountain? Does he not fly through a storm on a broomstick? Can he not put on a cap and make himself invisible? For I can tell you that our soldiers credit him with all these powers. Can he not, by waving his hand, multiply three hundred men into an army, spread them over a wide extent of country, and then cause them to sink into the ground and disappear? Our soldiers are convinced that he is in league with the evil one, even if he be not the gentlemen in black himself.”
Jack joined in the laugh. “He is a wonderful man,” he said, “though he cannot do all you credit him with. But he is absolutely tireless, and can do without sleep for any time; and yet to look at him no one would think that he was in any way a strong man. He is small, thin, and worn looking—in fact, almost insignificant in appearance, were it not for his keen eye and a certain lofty expression of face. My post is no sinecure, I can assure you, for the general expects all to be able to do as well as himself. But with a chief who never spares himself all are willing to do their best. Extreme as has been the labor of the troops, severe as have been their hardships, you will never hear a grumble; the men have most implicit confidence in him, and are ready to go anywhere and do anything he orders them.”
“He is a marvel,” the French officer said. “The way he took Barcelona, and then, with a handful of men, hunted our armies out of Catalonia and Valencia, was wonderful; and though it was at our cost, and not a little to our discredit, there is............