With the British Legion: A Story of the Carlist Wars

by G. A. Henty

"The Lord be praised!" Roper said, as, brushing his tears aside, he stood up and grasped Arthur's hands. "It is almost as if you had come back from the dead, sir. I have kept on saying you would return, though I knew in ray heart that I had lost all hope. Why," he said, as they went back to the light, "you are as black as a coal. What has happened to you?"

"It is only honest dirt, Roper. I will go and have a thorough wash, then I will tell you about it;" and he went into his own room, which opened on the other side of the sitting-room. By the time he came back Roper had lighted three more candles, had partly dressed himself, and had got out a bottle of wine and a glass.

"Get out another glass, Roper, and light the fire, then we will sit down and talk it all over. By the way, if you have anything to eat you may as well put it on the table. It is five hours since I have had supper, and I have been doing some hard work since."

Roper hurried away to get the things together while Arthur changed his clothes entirely. Two or three shirts had been handed in each week to him while he was confined in his prison, but he was glad enough of a complete change.

"Now, Roper," he said, as he sat down, "we will eat and talk. In the first place, tell me about my friends."

"The count has been looking for you everywhere, sir. He has had the whole police in search of you. They have got Don Silvio under arrest, but they cannot find out that he was concerned in your disappearance, though nobody has any doubt about it. Miss Mercedes has been ill. She was, I was told, in bed for a month; she is up now, but, as the servants tell me, looking like a ghost. However, I have no doubt she will soon get round, now that you are back.

"The difficulty has been to know where to start looking for you. No one had seen you since you left this house one morning, some two months ago, shortly after breakfast. From that time you had disappeared as if the earth had swallowed you up. I always said, 'The captain will come back if he is alive--bolts and bars won't hold him'. And I really believed so for three or four weeks; but when time went on and there were no signs of you, I began to think that you must have gone under. If you had, I knew it must have been directly you were taken, for before two days had passed Don Silvio had been caught. He was down at his place in the country, and was able to prove that he was there at the date of your capture. Well, they kept him under arrest, thinking that if you did come back you would be able to prove that he had a hand in it somehow."

"I believe he had, Roper, though I may say I have no shadow of proof. Now I will tell you all about it;" and he went into a full history of his capture, of his imprisonment, of his interview with the prior, and of the manner in which he had made his escape.

"You have done well indeed, sir, to get out of that place as you did! If I had been there, I should never have come out again alive. Lord, how you must have worked! So the priests were at the bottom of it after all?"

"Not quite at the bottom; for I have no doubt whatever that Don Silvio put them up to it. No doubt he said to them: 'Here is a young lady of noble family with a fine income. She wants to throw herself away on a Protestant and a foreigner; if you can manage to keep him away from her, she is pretty sure to go into a convent. She said, when she threw me over a year and a half ago, that it was her intention not to marry, but to lead a religious life; therefore if you get her lover removed now, no doubt she will do so.' You see, there were two motives for getting me shut up--one to avoid the grievous scandal of a Catholic lady of good family marrying a heretic, and the second, that of getting possession of her dowry. Well, thank goodness, I have baulked them! Has Colonel Wylde been here?"