"I was charged with murdering, or causing to be shot, two peasants; robbery, in levying contributions; blasphemous sacrilege, in destroying a statue of the Blessed Virgin. My horizon was now black as it could be! I knew very little of the language. Save Crogan, who remained beside me in court, I had not a friend or a comrade near me; for the whole of my guard had marched for Belem four hours before, while Maurice Quill, and the other sick officers, could neither defend nor succour me. I perceived in a moment, that, as Crogan said, I had been accused of outrages committed by les Chasseurs Britanniques (who wore scarlet uniform); but I resolved, that unless matters went hard with myself, not to criminate their officer, who, by leaving his own proper route, and relaxing his discipline, had become guilty of the acts for which I was that day to suffer. The three principal witnesses against me were, the alcalde, the muleteer, and a farmer from the partida of La Guardia.
"The first—old, stupid, half-blind, and obstinate—swore to my face that I was the officer who had ordered his dear brother Vincentio, the abogado, to be shot on his own threshold, and another man to be bayoneted. In vain I drew his attention to the Highland cap of the 71st, and to my tartan trews, assuring him that I was an Escoto. He shook his head—I wore a red coat—I was the very man!
"Then came the muleteer, a sturdy Catalonian, clad in a fur jacket and yellow cotton breeches, wearing a broad sombrero, under which his black hair hung in a red net. He, too, swore across his knife, that I had carried off his train of mules, or at least, that at the bayonet's point, my soldiers had done so, to travel more at their ease.
"'He did not see me, neither did he then see any waggons of sick, but he knew his mules as well as if he had been the father of them, the moment they appeared in the streets of la Ciudad Real.'
"'You will swear to your mules, hombre?'
"'By the marks in their ears, Don José, as readily as I would swear to my own nose.'
"'Lead forward some of those mules to the window, and let the witness see them.'
"An uproar of voices was heard in the park, and the witness, who went to the window, uttered a cry of dismay. The ears of his twenty mules had been shred off close by the bone!
"'Morte de Dios!' growled the officers, twirling their mustaches; 'these Inglesos are devils!'
"'It was murtherin cruel for the poor bastes,' whispered Darby Crogan; 'but it was all to save your honour's life I cropped them; and sure it is worth a bushel of mules' ears; for it was a good bushel ov 'em I buried this blessed morning. The Lord reward Misther Quill, for it was his best docthor's knife he lint me, to make croppies of them all.'