"We bought some peasant's clothes about our size, and the first beggar boys we saw we offered to exchange. You should have seen their faces of astonishment. When we got the clothes we made them into a bundle, and took them to the bakehouse, and got the baker to put them into the oven for a few hours to kill anything there might be in them. Now, Sam, it is time for us to be going. It will take us an hour's scrubbing to get the color off us. Be sure you keep our secret." CHAPTER IX. WITH THE GUERILLAS. It was on a fine morning at the end of March that a cortege of muleteers and mules left the little town of Alonqua. It was now four months since the Scudamores left the army, and in the intervening time they had tramped through a large portion of Spain. They had carried with them only a dozen or so little despatches done up in tiny rolls of the length and about the thickness of a bodkin, These were sewn inside the lining of their coats, in the middle of the cloth where it was doubled in at the seams, so that, even were the clothes to be examined carefully and felt all over, the chances of detection were slight indeed. They had each, on starting, half a dozen pieces of Spanish gold coin sewn between the thicknesses of leather of the soles of each of their shoes, for they did not start in the beggar clothes in which they had first disguised themselves. Their clothes were, indeed, worn and somewhat patched, but were of stout material, and they wore shoes, but no stockings. They had, indeed, the appearance of Spanish boys of the peasant class. The weather in the north of Spain is often very cold in winter, and the boys felt that, with rags and bare feet, they should suffer severely. All that they had to say and do had been learned by heart. The names and addresses of the agents of the British Government at every town had been laboriously learned before starting, and, as Peter said ruefully, it was worse than a dozen Greek impositions. At each place of any importance they would find the person to whom they were instructed to apply, would accost him with some password, and would be put up by him while they remained there. When they had gained the intelligence they required--of the number of French troops in the place and its neighborhood, a knowledge always obtained by going round, counting the men on parade, or, in the case of small villages, finding out easily enough from a peasant the number, quartered there, they would write a report on the number the intentions as far as they could learn them, the amount of food in store, and the sentiments of the population, would enclose the despatch in a goose-quill and give it to their host, who was responsible for forwarding it.