Tom was romancing with a vengeance, for if anyone liked work it was he. To be idle with him, as with the majority of decent fellows, was to be supremely miserable. As for the pay, a British army has the reputation of being liberal, and Wellington's was no exception.
"Ah!" exclaimed the bull-necked fellow, leering cunningly at Tom, and expectorating to a distance. "The British! I hate them as I hate the French. But as for pay, there are ways of getting rich even when one is only a muleteer."
Tom pricked up his ears instantly. He had taken note of this thick-necked, stumpy fellow before, he with the pock-mark face, a face which even if it had not been marred by disease would still have been the reverse of attractive.
"Getting rich? How?" he asked.
"Ah! That's telling. But there are ways, easy ways, ways unknown to the others."
"And there is good money in it, my friend?"
"Doubloons in plenty, I tell you," came the slow answer, while the man looked about him craftily.
"Come to my wagon," said Tom, at once, anxious to allay any suspicions, and prepared to lead the man on. For here might be something in the nature of a clue. "I have a friend there who also would make money, if it is to be made readily. There is danger?"
"Poof! Who thinks of danger when there is gold?" exclaimed the man loftily, though the flicker about his eyes belied his vaunted courage. "I will come gladly. You have a bottle of wine, perhaps. That would be interesting."
Tom had a bottle of excellent stuff, as a matter of fact, and had obtained it with a view to a possible meeting of this sort. And, after all, the offer of a good glass of wine on a campaign such as that of the Peninsula was often more binding than a greater service. It followed that, within ten minutes, the three, this muleteer, Tom, and his cousin, were as bosom comrades, while before the fellow left he had made a cunning appointment.