"'Muera al Filangheri!" shouted Baltasar to the soldiers; 'unfix your bayonets, plant the ground with them, and toss the traitor in a blanket!' "With shouts of acclamation at a suggestion so novel, they hastened to do as he suggested. The ground was soon planted thickly with three hundred bayonets, their sockets fixed in the earth, their sharp points upward. The breathless governor, pale and imploring mercy, was tossed thrice into the air from a blanket, as dogs are tossed on Shrove Tuesday. After the third toss, the blanket was withdrawn, and the hapless Filangheri fell crash on the bayonets. He was impaled in every part of his body at once; after this, leaving him miserably to die, the soldiers dispersed to join Baltasar's band of guerillas in the mountains of Herreruela; but this destruction of a king's officer caused Sir John Moore to deem him false to Ferdinand VII." "How horrible is all this!" exclaimed Quentin. "Desperate times and men, require desperate hearts and stern measures," said the muleteer Ramon, as he slung his long musket--which no doubt had a goodly charge of slugs in its barrel--and took a guitar which hung at the collar of one of his mules. "But we must not scare you, senor Inglese, as we shall surely do, if we talk longer thus; so now for something more cheerful:" and he began at once to sing, with a very mellow voice, a little romance, in which his companions joined with much laughter, and which began thus,-- "Tiempo es el Caballero, The world will all divine; Now my girdle is too narrow, They'll see my shame--and thine! "Tiempo es el Caballero-- When the maids my garments bring, I see them wink and nod their heads, I hear them tittering."* * Poetry of Spain. "We have come from Arronches and are going to Castello Branco, in Lower Beira, along the Portuguese frontier," said Ramon, "and yonder is the puebla at which we are to halt," he added, pointing to a few ruined walls that bordered the highway. "What walled town is that on the hill, with an old castle?" asked Quentin. "About two leagues beyond?" "Yes." "That is Castello de Vide, famous for its cloth factory." "Castello de Vide--good Heavens, senores arrieros, your pleasant society has lured me out of my proper way." "I am sorry to hear it," said Ramon, drily. "I should have gone to the right." "Madre de Dios!" "To the right?" "Towards the French lines?" Such were the exclamations of the muleteers as their frowns deepened. "I should have gone somewhat in that direction, at all events," said Quentin, reddening with the annoyance and confusion natural to an honourable person when viewed with mistrust.