“Oh, yes, Charley! Tell him we’re capital troops in our own little way in the mountains; would never do in pitched battles,—skirmishing’s our forte; and for cutting off stragglers, or sacking a town, back them at any odds.”
“Yes, yes, I know all that; you’ve nothing more?”
“Nothing,” said he, once more closing his eyes and crossing his hands before him, while his lips continued to mutter on,—“nothing more, except you may say from me,—he knows me, Sir Arthur does. Tell him to guard himself from intemperance; a fine fellow if he wouldn’t drink.”
“You horrid old humbug, what nonsense are you muttering there?”
“Yes, yes; Solomon says, ‘Who hath red eyes and carbuncles?’ they that mix their lush. Pure Sneyd never injured any one. Tell him so from me,—it’s an old man’s advice, and I have drunk some hogsheads of it.”
With these words he ceased to speak, while his head, falling gently forward upon his chest, proclaimed him sound asleep.
“Adieu, then, for the last time,” said I, slapping him gently on the shoulder. “And now for the road.”
CHAPTER LVII.
CUESTA.