There were not a few (but these were generally old Jacobite ladies of decayed Highland families, who form the gossiping tabbies and wall-flowers of the Northern Meeting) who asserted that in their young days they had heard of such a regiment marching by night, once a year to the field of Culloden; for it is currently believed by the most learned on such subjects in the vicinity of the "Clach na Cudden," that on the anniversary of the sorrowful battle, a certain place, which shall be nameless, opens, and that the restless souls of the murderers of the wounded clansmen march in military array to the green graves upon the purple heath, in yearly penance; and this story was thought to receive full corroboration by the apparition of a fat lubberly spectre with the nine of diamonds chained to his neck; as it was on that card--since named the Curse of Scotland--the Duke of Cumberland hastily pencilled the savage order to "show no quarter to the wounded, but to slaughter all." Such was the story of our old Highland Quartermaster. CHAPTER XXIX. THE LAST OF DON FABRIQUE. A week or two after our return from Seville to Gibraltar, Jack Slingsby received a note from a Spanish officer, who commanded a detachment of the Grenadiers of Jaen, to the effect that the famous bandit Fabrique de Urquija had been taken, and was condemned to die by the spirited Alcalde of San Roque; that his execution was to take place on the day after to-morrow, and that if we wished to behold the mode of punishing such criminals in Spain, it would afford him much pleasure if we joined his party, which was ordered to assist in guarding the scaffold. Though neither of us were animated by a love of cruelty or taste for the morbid, we were somewhat curious to see how this romantic vagabond, who so pitilessly had meted out death to so many others, would encounter his own terrible doom, and availing ourselves of the Spanish officer's polite offer, we procured a day's leave, rode over to breakfast with him, and marched with his detachment to San Roque, a little town, which lies, as I have elsewhere said, about six miles from our garrison on the Spanish side. As we proceeded, the Spanish capitano told us the little episode of Don Fabrique's capture. It happened thus. The Alcalde of San Roque was reputed to be immensely wealthy, and to have in a secret place a strong box full of yellow doubloons and rich silver duros, piled up in shining pillars to its brim, like the treasure chests which the Moors are supposed to have hidden in all the old castles and ruined atalayas in Spain, and all of which are occasionally visible to those who have the fortune of being born on Good Friday, as every Spaniard knows.