“That’s it, sure; must be. How long since it passed?”
“Not quite twenty minutes, Señor Colonel. It’s just gone round the corner; yonder where you see the dust stirring.”
“Adelante!” cried the colonel, without waiting to question further, and as the trumpet gave out the “Forward—gallop!” the Hussar troop went sweeping through the gate, leaving the guard-sergeant and his men in a state of great mystification and no little chagrin; he, their chief spokesman, saying with a sorrowful air—
“Well hombres, it don’t look like a grito, after all!”
Chapter Thirty Four.
An ill-used Coachman.
“Such forethought?” exclaimed Rivas, as the landau went rattling along the road with the speed of a war-chariot, “wonderful!” he went on. “Ah, for cleverness, commend me to a woman—when her will’s in it. We men are but simpletons to them. My glorious Ysabel! She’s the sort for a soldier’s wife. But don’t let me be claiming all the credit for her. Fair play to the Señorita Valverde; who has, I doubt not, done her share of the contriving—on your account, Señor.”
The Señor so spoken to had no doubt of it either, and would have been grieved to think otherwise, but he was too busy at the moment to say much, and only signified his assent in monosyllables. With head down, and arms in see-sawing motion, he was endeavouring to cut their coupling-chain; the tool he handled being a large file; another of the “something” to be found under the cushions—as found it was! No wonder Don Ruperto’s enthusiastic admiration of the providence which had placed it there.