So I were out of prison, and kept sheep,
I would be as merry as the day is long.”
King John.
Nearly a month had passed—a month of dreary captivity. It is true there was not a prisoner within the walls of San Sebastian who had less reason to complain, but still I felt myself a prisoner. Cammaran. as far as means allowed, anticipated every want. I was under no surveillance—the city was open to me—I wandered where I pleased—and every sentry I passed saluted me. The voltigeur was a general favourite,—the story of his deliverance had been told in the garrison, and even with more romance than had attended it; and every French soldier we passed pointed out the fosterer and myself as the preservers of a gallant comrade. If we met a group of officers, the moniteur, the cigar-case, or the snuff-box were hospitably presented to me; and could Mark Antony have drank “pottle deep,” he had only to turn into a French guard-house, and every flask it contained would have been placed at his disposal.
Such were my relations with the enemy; but the bearing of my host was sometimes hard to understand. It was professedly kind; but the manner was forced, and repulsive. His habits were retired—no overture to intimacy had been made—beyond the detached portion of his mansion where I had been located at the first, the rest of his domicile was to me a terra incognita. Of his establishment I had never seen but two—a particularly dark-visaged youth, with a cutthroat cast of countenance, and a woman of seventy who was deaf, or pretended to be deaf. Still, our wants wire carefully attended to, and at times Senhor Francisco asked after my health in a tone of voice that would lead a person to imagine the man was sincere in the inquiry.
“Upon my conscience,” observed the fosterer, as he presented himself one morning at my bed-side, “I have a fancy this house isn’t over good. If banshees played upon the fiddle, I would swear that I heard one these three last nights in the garden that we see behind the window of my room. Arrah—do you think the place was formerly a madhouse? Except Newgate—and, blessed be God, I can only spake of it from description, the devil a such a place for locks and bolts I was ever in before. Has the ould gentleman, do ye think, much money? Every window barred up like a watchhouse—but they would require, for all that, to be looked over, for I have managed to remove two of mine,—and if I live till to-night, I’ll have a walk in the garden.”
“No—no—Mark; that will never do. We must not intrude upon Don Francisco. He may have some secret to conceal.”
“Troth! and ye’r right,” returned the fosterer. “May be he has a private still at work, or does a little in the coining. But, faith, no matter—I’ll have a peep to-night. But if he’s forging notes, or making bad dollars, what can he want with the music?”
“Music!” I repeated.
“Yes; I hear a guitar every night, and two nights ago saw something very like a ghost—”