Military arms and household utensils were hung upon the walls or placed on the wooden shelves; the stiff-backed chairs and sofas were already occupied by some of the before-mentioned picturesque and motley actors in the late scene, and a large branch candlestick, that whilom had evidently figured on the altar of some stately church, with its cluster of sputtering candles, gave light to the long apartment, and enabled Quentin to examine it, and to see seated at the upper end, a man in a kind of uniform, writing, occasionally consulting an old and coarsely engraved map of Alentejo, and referring from time to time to the Padre Trevino and others, who leaned on their muskets, and who, lounging and laughing, smoked their cigaritos about his chair. This personage wore a black velvet jacket fancifully embroidered with silver; a pair of British Light Infantry wings, also of silver, probably stripped from some poor 29th man who fell at Roleia, were on his shoulders. He wore a gorgeous Spanish sash, with a buff cavalry waist-belt and heavy Toledo sabre in a steel scabbard. His sombrero, adorned by a gold band and large scarlet plume, was stuck very much on one side of his head, as if he were somewhat of a dandy; but underneath it was tied a handkerchief, deeply saturated with the blood of a recent wound. "Senor Don Baltasar," said Lazarillo very respectfully, "a messenger from the British cantonments on the frontier." He of the silver wings and Toledo sabre looked up, and Quentin was thunderstruck on finding himself face to face with the stranger of the wayside well, the same personage from whom he had rescued Eugene de Ribeaupierre, and whom he had stunned like an ox by a blow of the cajado! CHAPTER XXIII. DON BALTASAR DE SALDOS. "We must not fail, we must not fail, However fraud or force assail; By honour, pride, or policy, By Heaven itself! we must be free. We spurned the thought, our prison burst, And dared the despot to the worst; Renewed the strife of centuries, And flung our banner to the breeze."--DAVIS. A start of extreme astonishment deepening into a black scowl, which anon changed to something of a scornful smile in the Spaniard's sallow visage, was Quentin Kennedy's first greeting from the Guerilla Chief, who then bowed haughtily, and said with an unpleasant emphasis-- "Oho, senor; so you are the messenger! Santos--why didn't you tell me your errand on the day we met by the cross of King Alphonso? You would thus have saved yourself a devil of a journey and me this knock on the head." "It would have been unwise to reveal my mission to the first stranger I met; I deplore the result of our second interview, senor; but I would not stand by and see an unarmed man killed without interfering." "A Frenchman!" said Baltasar with intense scorn.