"Very well, though you look dog-tired. Have you got a flask you can give him, Seymour? That’s right. There’s a fellow half an hour ahead of you, with a despatch reporting our capture here—and I’ve put you down as missing, my boy. You’re sure you can do it? It’s a ride of nearly twenty miles." "I’ll go, sir," said Jack simply. "May I mention two things? I left my horse at the posting inn at Valdestillos, and promised to send for it and buy the Frenchman’s gray. Will you look at it, sir, and offer a price? And there was a little gipsy boy with a few Spaniards in the watch-house here. The boy has been rather useful to me; will you order him and the rest to be released and looked after a bit?" "Done to both. I’ll buy the horse myself if he’s fit; and as for the boy and those Spanish louts, they were released long ago, and the gipsy has kept the men in fits with his monkey antics. Now wait just a moment while I scribble a note to Sir John, and then be off, and think yourself a lucky young dog." When Jack, fortified with Captain Seymour’s flask, went to the door to mount his horse, he became for the first time thoroughly aware how tired he was. He had been in the saddle almost without intermission for more than twelve hours, and as he lifted his foot to the stirrup, he felt as though his thigh was weighted with lead, and on the point of snapping. But he would never have confessed his fatigue, much less have abnegated his right to carry the important despatch to the commander-in-chief; so, aching but cheerful, he cantered off into the night. He had a ride of eighteen or twenty miles before him, and it was now past midnight. "Thank heaven!" he said to himself, "in three hours or so I shall be between the sheets." Soon after he started, snow began to fall in scattered flakes, giving cold and gentle dabs to his face. The horse answered to his spur, and trotted rapidly along the solitary road, which grew whiter and whiter as he proceeded, past the cabin where the French outpost had been surprised, past the cross-road where the little tussle of the afternoon had taken place, over the bridge, up the hill, and thus on and on until he was within a couple of miles of the town of Alaejos.