CHAPTER XIV.
THE WAYSIDE CROSS AND WELL.
"If in this exile dark and drear,
To which my fate has doomed me now,
I should unnoticed die—what tear,
What tear of sympathy will flow?
For I have sought an exile's woe,
And fashioned my own misery;
Who then will pity me?"
Cancionero de Amberes, 1557.
As Quentin walked on in solitude after Rowland Askerne left him, he could not help musing, as he frequently did, on the changes a short time had wrought in him and in his ideas. It would seem that from a mere day-dreaming schoolboy, whose most onerous purposes were to fill his basket with trout from the Girvan, the Doon, or the Lollards' Linn; to supply the cook with an occasional brace of ptarmigan from the oakwood shaw, or of blackcock from the Mains of Kilhenzie; from trying a pad for Flora, or culling the flowers which he knew she loved most, he had risen to be a man and a soldier, valued by his comrades, all officers of bravery and position, trusted by his superiors, and charged with a great and confidential duty—a portion of the vast game of war and politics now played by Britain for the deliverance of Spain; and yet, withal, he longed for a companion, and to hear the voice of a friend, for a sense of intense loneliness gradually stole over him as the twilight deepened, and the purple shadows grew more sombre on the hills of Portuguese Estremadura.
To Quentin it seemed that his bodily strength and bulk had increased, for drill and marching had developed every muscle to the fullest extent; thus he was stronger, more active and hardy than before.
He felt too, that the time had come when youth was no longer a libel against him; the time for doing something worthy of being mentioned in a despatch of the commander-in-chief, in the government gazette, in general orders—something gallant, manly, and dashing; and that he would turn the occasion to its best account, and achieve something glorious, "or," as romances and melo-dramas have it, "perish in the attempt."
"If I acquit myself well in this, my first duty, it shall in itself prove a revenge upon Cosmo!" thought he.
And so he trod manfully and hopefully on, dreaming of the future, knowing but little of the path he was at present to pursue, and less of the perils and pit-falls that were around it.
As the evening deepened into night with great rapidity, for there is very little twilight in those regions—the mighty shadows of the sierra fell eastward in a sombre mass across the valley through which lay the road—a mere bridle path—towards the Spanish frontier, while the ranges of peaks that faced the west were still glowing in ruddy saffron or pale purple against the blue dome of the star-studded sky.
About twelve miles from Portalegre, the road pursued by Quentin enters a narrow gorge or immense chasm or cleft which rends the mountains from their summit to their base. Down the steep wall of rock on one side, a spring trickles for some hundred feet, and at the foot, near the road-way, it is received into the quaintly carved basin of an ancient stone fountain, behind which stands a memorial cross.
A niche in the shaft of the latter contains a little wayside altar. An image of the Madonna was rudely and gaudily painted in the recess, and before it a copper lamp was always kept burning. This shrine, once reputed to be of great sanctity, had been mutilated and its lamp destroyed by the French; but it had been replaced by another, which was always supplied with wick and oil by the passing muleteers, contrabandists, guerillas, and others.