A condemnatory finger was pointed at Septimus John Clifford. Don Juan regarded him severely for some moments, and then smiled and snapped his fingers. "Come," he said; "the affairs of our business lose significance when compared with the dangers of this country and the efforts of your soldiers. Tom asks for Spanish irregulars; he shall have them. He asks for a commander; Alfonso is the lad. Eh? You don't dare deny it." Septimus did not. In his heart he was delighted, and, like the sensible, long-headed man he was, he promptly sat down to discuss ways and means. As for Tom and Jack, they spent three days in the city, and then, accompanied by a guide, set off for the Spanish frontier. "You will be met there by Alfonso," said Don Juan. "I have sent a man across to him, and he will be at the estate as soon as you are. Here is a letter for him, and you will find that he will give you every assistance, and will fall into this scheme with eagerness." Some three days later found our two heroes at the estate belonging to Don Juan, where they were joined a day later by Alfonso. He rode up on a big mule, and dropped from his saddle at the porch of the house. A fine, frank young fellow he proved to be. "Glad to meet you, señors," he cried. "Which is my cousin?" "You speak English?" asked Tom, when the greetings were over. "Not a word; but Portuguese, of course." "Then Jack must hurry up with his lessons," grinned Tom; for his adjutant, with that perverseness common to many English lads, hated languages. Too full, perhaps, of insular pride, he imagined that his own tongue should carry him everywhere, and that foreigners should promptly contrive to add English to theirs, rather than that he should be bothered to master any language beyond his own. A perverseness, one may call it, a perverseness that gives the foreigner an enormous opportunity, and in these days of easy transit and of broadened interests, is telling against the Englishman. The polyglot Britisher of to-morrow will advance better and farther than will the man of to-day who is ignorant of all other languages than his own. However, Jack was not the one to be stupid, and, indeed, for quite a while had been struggling with French, Portuguese, and Spanish. The four weeks which followed were busy ones for the three young fellows. First the men of the estate had to be called up, together with others living in the neighbourhood. "We want three hundred, so as to match those in Portugal," said Tom. "It will be as well also to have a reserve, who can go on training in our absence. I shall do the same with the men we have raised in Portugal, and, as it seems that the two forces are at this moment separated by only some fifty miles, there will be no need to move nearer. But we must enlist the help of men living between us. It will not be difficult to devise signals, such as fires on the hilltops, which will warn either party or will summon one to join the other."