ur we should not be surprised to find him here the
next." He stopped as shots were heard fired in the streets.

"You must excuse ceremony, sir," he said, "and mount at once with your
men and accompany me. In ten minutes we shall have the whole country
buzzing round us like wasps; and now that the object of my ride is
accomplished, I don't wish to throw away my men's lives."

The horses were saddled without loss of time, and in two or three
minutes Jack was trotting down the village in the midst of the French
cavalry amid a scathing fire from behind the houses and walls.

The French officer rode at the head of his troop till well beyond the
village, then reining in his horse, joined his prisoner.

"And now," he asked, "whom have I the honor of capturing?"

"I am Captain Stilwell," Jack replied, "one of the Earl of
Peterborough's aides de camp."

"I am Captain de Courcy," the French officer said; "happily, although
the French and English have taken opposite sides on this question, we
can esteem and honor each other as brave and civilized adversaries. As
for these Spanish scoundrels, they are no better than banditti; they
murder us in our beds, they poison our wine, they as often as not burn
us alive if we fall into their hands; they are savages, neither more nor
less; and why Philip of Anjou, who could have had all the pleasures of
life as a prince of the blood at Versailles, should covet the kingship
of this country, passes my understanding. And now tell me about that
paladin, your general. Peste, what a man! And you are one of his aides
de camp? Why, if he drags you about everywhere with him, you must lead
the life of a dog."

"When I last heard of the general he was at Valencia," Jack said. "But
that was ten days since."

"Ten days!" the Frenchman said; "then by now he may be in London, or in
Rome, or at Paris."

"With the wind favoring him he might be at Rome, but he could scarcely
have arrived at either London or Paris."

"There is no saying," the French officer laughed. "Has he not three
leagued boots, and can he not step from mountain to mountain? Does he
not fly through a storm on a broomstick? Can he not put on a cap and
make himself invisible? For I can tell you that our soldiers credit him
with all these powers. Can he not, by waving his hand, multiply three
hundred men into an army, spread them over a wide extent of country, and
then cause them to sink into the ground and disappear? Our soldiers are