"That was an exaggeration, Nita. Still, we managed to do them a good deal of damage, and kept the French in this part of the country pretty busy.
"And now, Nita, I have come to fulfil my promise," and he handed her the box in which the jeweller had packed up his purchases.
"These are for your wedding, Nita, and if it comes off while we are in this part of the country, I shall come and dance at it."
The girl uttered cries of delight, as she opened parcel after parcel.
"Oh, senor, it is too much, too much altogether!" she cried, as she laid them all out on the table before her.
"Not a bit of it," Terence said. "But for you, I should be in prison now. If they had been ten times as many, and ten times as costly, I should still have felt your debtor, all my life.
"And where is Garcia now?"
"He has gone to join Morillo," she said. "He always said that, as soon as the English came to our help, he should go out; so, six weeks ago, he sold all his mules and bought a gun, and went off."
"I am sorry not to have seen him," Terence said. "And now, Nita, when he returns you are to give him this little box. It contains a present to help you both to start housekeeping, in good style. You see that I have put your name and his both on it. No one can say what may happen in war. Remember that this is your joint property; and if, by ill fortune, he should not come back again, then it becomes yours."
"Oh, senor, you are altogether too good! Oh, I am a lucky girl! I am sure that no maid ever went to church before with such splendid ornaments. How envious all the girls will be of me!"
"And I expect the men will be equally envious of Garcia, Nita. Now, if you will take my advice, you will not show these things to anyone at present; but will hide them in the box, in some very safe place, until you are quite sure that the French will never come back again. If your neighbours saw them, some ill-natured person might tell the French that you had received them from an English officer, and then it might be supposed that you had been acting as a spy for us; so it is better that you should tell no one, not even your unclethat is, if you have not already mentioned it to him."
"I have never told him," the girl said. "He is a good man and very kind; but he is very timid, and afraid of getting into trouble. If he asks me who you are and what you wanted, I shall tell him that you are an English officer who was in prison,
in the convent; that you always bought your fruit of me, and said, if you ever came to Salamanca again, you would find me out."
"That will do very well. Now I will say goodbye, Nita. If we remain here after the French have retreated, I will come and see you again; for there will be so many English officers here that I would not be noticed. But there may be a battle any day; or Marmont may fall back, and we should follow him; so that I may not get an opportunity again."
"I hope you will come, I do hope you will come! I will bury all these things, this evening, in the ground in the kitchen, after my uncle has gone to bed."
"Well, goodbye, Nita. I must be off now, as I have a friend with me. When you see Garcia, you can tell him that you have given me a kiss. I am sure he won't mind."
"I should not care if he did," the girl said saucily, as she held up her face. "Goodbye, senor. I shall always think of you, and pray the Virgin to watch over you."
After Marmont fell back across the Douro there was a pause in the operations and, as the British army was quartered in and around Salamanca, the city soon swarmed with British soldiers; and presented a scene exactly similar to that which it had worn when occupied by Moore's army, nearly four years before.
"What fun it was, Terence," Ryan said, "when we frightened the place out of its very senses, by the report that the French were entering the town!"
"That is all very well, Dick; but I think that you and I were just as much frightened as the Spaniards were, when we saw how the thing had succeeded, and that all our troops were called out. There is no saying what they would have done to us, had they found out who started the report. The very least thing that would have happened would have been to be tried by court martial, and dismissed from the service; and I am by no means sure that worse than that would not have befallen us."
"Yes, it would have been an awful business, if we had been found out. Still, it was a game, wasn't it? What an awful funk they were in! It was the funniest thing I ever saw. Things have changed since then, Terence, and I am afraid we have quite done with jokes of that sort."
"I should hope so, Dick. I think that I can answer for myself, but I am by no means sure as to you."
"I like that," Ryan said indignantly. "You were always the leader in mischief. I believe you would be, now, if you had the chance."
"I don't know," Terence replied, a little more seriously than he had before spoken. "I have been through a wonderful number of adventures, since then; and I don't pretend that I have not enjoyed them in something of the same spirit in which we enjoyed the fun we used to have together; but you see, I have had an immense deal of responsibility. I have two thousand men under me and, though Bull and Macwitty are good men, so far as the carrying out of an order goes, they are still too much troopers, seldom make a suggestion, and never really discuss any plan I suggest; so that the responsibility of the lives of all these men really rests entirely upon my shoulders. It has been only when I have been separated from them, as when I was a prisoner, that I have been able to enjoy an adventure in the same sort of way that we used to do, together."