The general, we said, was reflecting. His thoughts were sad and gloomy. Provisions and ammunition, squandered by the officers ordered to serve them out, were running short; the garrison, tired of being shut up within the walls, were beginning to mutter, and would ere long complain loudly. Coahuila had been so completely invested by the Mexican army that, from the day the siege began, no one had been able to enter or leave the town. The general, consequently, was as much deprived of news as if he were five hundred leagues away from Mexico. The soldiers, accustomed since the beginning of the insurrection to live at the expense of the country people, plunder, and ill-treat them, did not like the confined diet to which they were constrained. Unpleasant rumours circulated among them, although it was impossible to trace them to their source. The officers themselves were discouraged, and desired the end of this state of things, which every day that passed rendered worse. The general, therefore, saw with terror the moment at hand when all would fail him at once, and he would be forced to throw himself on the mercy of enemies whom he had supposed so contemptible, and whom he had taken a delight in exasperating by unlooked-for and objectless cruelty. Hurled thus from his high estate into a bottomless abyss, the general was suffering from one of those cold and concentrated attacks of fury which are the more terrible because they can find no outlet.
All at once the general fancied he could distinguished the shadowy outline of a man, who was approaching the ramparts with the utmost caution. Still this man appeared to care very little about being seen from the town, and only tried to conceal himself from the sentries, who might have noticed him in the camp. Some considerable time elapsed ere this man, who advanced looking back anxiously every moment, arrived within pistol shot of the ramparts. The general rose, and, making an officer a sign to approach, whispered a few words in his ear. The officer went off, and the general returned to his post of observation.
The stranger still advanced, apparently growing bolder the nearer he drew to the ramparts. All at once several men dashed out of a postern gate, and ere the stranger had time to attempt a useless resistance, he was thrown down, bound, and carried into the town by the men who had so cleverly seized him. Still, we are bound to mention that the soldiers experienced no difficulty in dragging their prisoner along; on the contrary, he affected to follow them with the most perfect readiness. The general, while waiting for the prisoner, walked up and down the ramparts; when he was brought up to him, he looked at him for a moment in silence. The stranger was a young man, with an intelligent and sarcastic face, tall and powerfully built.
"Who are you, scamp?" the general asked him roughly, "And how is it that you dare to prowl so near the walls of a besieged town?"
"Hang it all," the stranger replied, in excellent Spanish, though with a marked foreign accent, "I was not prowling round the walls."
"What were you doing, then?"
"I was merely trying to get into the town."
"This is an impudent scoundrel," the general said to himself, "but at least he is frank. And, why, pray, did you want to enter Coahuila?"
"If you do not mind, General, giving orders that I should be freed from these cords, which annoy me, I shall answer you with greater ease."
"Very good; but I warn you that, at the slightest suspicious movement, I shall have your brains blown out."