coming on towards them at
a charging gallop.

In a few seconds they were up to the gate, which, being still open, they
could have passed through, without stop or parley. For all, they made
both, the commanding officer suddenly reining up, and shouting back
along the line--

"_Alto_!"

The "halt" was proclaimed by the trumpeter at his side, which brought
the galloping cohort to a stand.

"_Sargento_!" thundered he at their head to the guard-sergeant, who,
with his men re-formed, was again at "Present arms!"

"Has a carriage passed you, guard--a landau--grey horses, five men in
it?"

"Only four men, Senor Colonel; but all the rest as you describe it."

"Only four! What can that mean? Was there a coachman in light blue
livery--silver facings?"

"The same, Senor Colonel."

"That's it, sure; must be. How long since it passed?"

"Not quite twenty minutes, Senor 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 Senorita Valverde; who has, I doubt not, done her share
of the contriving--on your account, Senor."

The Senor 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.

Handy with workmen's tools as with warlike weapons, the young Irishman
had