“Holy Mary!” he exclaimed. “Is this yourself, Master Hector? Well, I never expected to see you alive; though that black gentleman, with the long name, strove all he could to give me comfort. May the Lord reward him for the same!--and upon my soul, for a perfect stranger, he showed the greatest affection for us both After we were safe out of fire, and taking breath for a minute in the cork-wood, I asked him, fair and easy, what he thought had become of ye? ‘’Gad,’ says he, ‘I think its a toss-up between shooting and hanging. The chances are, that your master was finished in the affray; but if he escaped that, he is sure to be throttled in the morning. Don’t be cast down,’ says he, ‘if they string up our absent friend, I’ll hang twelve Frenchmen in his place, and you shall keep the reckonin’.’ It was very civil on the gentleman’s part, but, ‘faith, I was better pleased, an hour afterwards, when a goatherd brought us intelligence that you were safe and sound, and the other poor devils dead as a door-nail. But here he comes--a mighty pleasant sort of friend, but sorra worse enemy one would meet in a month of Sundays. Indeed, I have no reason to complain of him; a better comrade I never travelled with--I have lived like a fighting-cock since we came together; and as my clothes were made ribbons of in the skrimmage, here I am rigged out anew from top to toe.” As he spoke, the partida leader approached, wrung my hand ardently with his, and warmly congratulated me on my safe deliverance from French bondage, and in having escaped any material injury in our outbreak from the posada, and the more recent attack. Confiding the duty of removing the prisoners, horses, and plunder to Villa Toro, he requested me to walk with him to the head of the pass. As we proceeded along the scene of action--if such an affair might so be termed, where the loss was entirely on one side, and no resistance had been offered--I was struck with the strange alteration the appearance of the road had undergone. Ten minutes since it had been strewn with dead chasseurs and sharpshooters, dressed in their showy uniforms, and fully and effectively equipped. Not a soldier could be discovered now; but in their places numerous corpses might be seen stripped of every covering, and in a state of nudity, that almost rendered identity impossible. One body, however, I distinctly recognised:--the white hair, and stern expression of countenance, even after death, could not be mistaken:--the dead soldier was the old Republican--Colonel La Coste. CHAPTER XXXI. THE TRIAL. “Proceed to judgment; by my sou!, I swear. There is no power in the tongue of man To alter me.” SHAKSPEARE. |I could not pass the still bleeding corpse of the old commander without gazing for a moment on the body, and expressing my sympathy aloud. The Empecinado directed a careless look at the fallen Frenchman.