"I congratulate you most heartily," Leon said. "I have been wondering, since I heard that your Legion had been disbanded, what you were going to do. I am leaving, as I told you, for one of my country estates near Albacete, with Mercedes, and shall be away about a couple of months. If you chance to be coming that way, I need not say how glad I shall be to see you. Of course you don't know yet where you are likely to go, but it may as well be there as in any other direction. Perhaps you will be back as soon as we shall. I hope so sincerely."
On the day when Colonel Wylde left for the north, Arthur started for Mercia. When out of the town he called Roper up to his side.
"I am heartily glad to be at work again, Roper."
"I am not sorry myself, sir. I have nothing to say against Madrid, but one gets tired of having nothing particular to do, and especially as for the past three or four days, since I have been in this scarlet uniform, everyone has stared at me in the street. I shall get used to it in time, of course, but it is rather trying at first."
"I dare say it is," Arthur laughed. "Of course I don't feel it so much. There is not so much difference between officers' uniforms as between those of private soldiers, at any rate not between undress uniforms. I am a good deal more comfortable in my present dress than I was before, for I could not but see myself that it was getting very small, and I had almost given up wearing it."
"Yes, you keep on growing so. You were a good bit taller than I was when you joined the Legion two years ago, and now you are pretty nearly a head taller. You must be over six feet now, and I see these little Spaniards look up to you as you walk along."
"Yes, I have been rather disgusted at shooting up so. I don't suppose other people notice it; but as I was wanting to look six or seven years older than I am, it was annoying that I should keep on growing. Well, I think I have pretty nearly done now."
They travelled by comfortable stages down to Mercia. Arthur had several interviews with the general in command of the forces there, and received assurances from him that every care should be used to mitigate the horrors of the war, but that such a passion of rage had been excited by the massacres perpetrated by Cabrera that it was all but impossible to keep the people in hand.
"It is to Cabrera himself that you should address yourself, señor," the general said. "We are anxious to prosecute the war in the spirit of civilization, but as long as he persists in carrying it on like a demon it is plainly impossible for us to fight in kid gloves."
"I will go to Cabrera," Arthur said; "even he ought to have satisfied his vengeance for the murder of his mother. Were I in his place I would hunt Nogueras through the country until I found him, but it is simply monstrous that he should continue to take vengeance upon innocent people."