"As prisoners, colonel?" cried Slingsby, with an astounded air from the other end of the table, and pausing with his hand on a wine decanter; "you don't mean to say as prisoners?" "Prisoners--not at all; how could you think of such a thing?" said the colonel, laughing, for he was a hearty old soldier, at whose name stood P.W. and K.H., and C.B. in _Hart's Army List_; "you go merely to explain the late affair in person; and it is the more necessary for you both to go as the two aides-de-camp of the governor are on the sick list. It is only a ride of some seventy or eighty miles into Spain--wish 't were I who had the duty to do." "And where does the captain-general live?" "At Seville, to which place he is now returning from Jaen." "Ah, indeed, Seville," said I, reviving, as I filled my glass with Moselle, and Slingsby stuck his glass in his remarkably knowing eye. "You'll take good horses; but be careful of rogues, raterillos, and footpads by the way. I can lend you a pair of pistols with spring bayonets." "Thank you, colonel, I have my revolver," said I, laughing. "What! you smile, Ramble?" said the colonel; "and believe me to have the bandittiphobia; but I know Spain well, having marched over every foot of the Peninsula under Lord Lyndedoch, and fought my way from the Black Horse Square at Lisbon to the banks of the Nive, so I know pretty well, that in peace as in war armed desperadoes, whose hands are against all men, are, as a certain traveller says, 'the very weeds of the Spanish soil.' Right well do I know the land of Los Espagnols as we used to call them in the old fighting 5th Hussars. I was in the cavalry then, and had I not grown stiff in the joints, and lost all relish for adventures by day, fleas by night, and the resinous taste of vino out of a skin at all times, I would have saved you the trouble of the journey and gone myself; but my instructions from home say that Captain Ramble and Lieutenant Slingsby must go, so there is the end of it. Major, Mr. Vice, another bottle of wine to drink 'bon voyage' to Ramble and Slingsby." "With all my heart; sergeant Slopper, a fresh allowance of wine," said the major. "Wish I were going with you," said Shafton, the captain of our light company; "a ride to Seville! the very name of the place conjures up a sunny vision of orange trees and glowing grapes, of black mantillas and taper ancles, and different duty from trenching in the Crimea as we might have been, and ought to have been by this time." "Aye," quoth M'Leechy the doctor, who although married (as he knew to his cost) was dining that day with the mess; "and a pleasant change after our dull routine of garrison life, during which we have, as 'Punch' says-- "Contentedly eat ration beefs and muttons, Contentedly drank ration rums and waters; Darned our own socks, and sewed our own buttons, Fried in summer, and froze in winter quarters."