"You think so?"
"I know it. But you'll see all the fun"—this somewhat lugubriously.
Archy walked on, sad and disappointed, and did not even smile when Langton climbed into the wheelbarrow and Judkins rushed it up the steep roadway at a smart gait.
As might have been foreseen, Don Martin did nothing towards getting Archy to France.
A courteous and ornate reply was received promptly to General Eliot's letter, and after that came a long silence. Then followed a series of letters, requesting all sorts of proof that Archy was what he represented himself to be. These, Don Martin always politely explained, were in the usual order, and came not from him, but from the Minister at Madrid.
Archy was asked to show his uniform and sword. He had neither. There were more letters, more asseverations of a desire to pass him through; but the upshot of all the negotiations was that Archy never found he had made the slightest real progress towards getting out. He wrote many letters to his uncle, and even to Lord Bellingham, trusting to the chance of Musa's getting them across to the African coast; but even while writing them he felt the uselessness of it. And, after a while, what seemed to him a strange thing came to pass. In spite of his being a prisoner, he began to be heart and soul with the British garrison. As he explained it, in a burst of confidence, to Langton:
"I ought not to want you to win. I ought to wish that the Spaniards should march in to-morrow morning; but I don't—and I can't. Don't mistake me. I would lay down my life this moment to drive you out of North America. That is my country, and there you are my enemies; but, dash me, Langton, if I can spend months here, eating your bread, such as it is, well treated by everybody, seeing what a gallant fight you are making against the Spaniards, without feeling as one of you. I suppose it is clean against the articles of war to feel so, but I can't help it."
"I would feel the same way, I dare say, under the same circumstances," replied Langton. "You see, you are not a prisoner on American ground—or English ground either, for that matter; that makes all the difference in the world. And, besides, you are not treated as a prisoner. You would be a queer fish not to feel as you do."
"At all events, I shall do my duty; and if that old hidalgo, Don Martin de Stick-in-the-mud, thinks I mean to give up trying to get away from here, he does not know Archibald Baskerville, Esquire—that much is plain. I have written him letters in English, French, and Spanish—such French and Spanish! I dare say the old fellow finds the reading of them as hard work as I do the writing them, and I can keep it up as long as he can."