ence dismounted.

"What can I do for you, senor?"

"I wanted to ask you if your niece, Nita, is still staying with
you?"

The man looked greatly surprised at the question.

"She has done no harm, I hope?" he asked.

"Not at all, but I wish to speak to her. Is she married yet to
Garcia, the muleteer?"

The old man looked still more surprised.

"No, senor. Garcia is away, he is no longer a muleteer."

"Well, you have not answered me if your niece is here."

"She is here, senor, but she is not in the house at this moment.
She returned here from her father's, last autumn. The country was
so disturbed that it was not right that young women should remain
in the villages."

"Will you tell her that a British officer will call to see her, in
half an hour, and beg her to remain in until I come?"

"I will tell her, senor."

Terence went at once to a silversmith's, and bought the handsomest
set of silver jewelry, such as the peasants wore, that he had in
his shop; including bracelets, necklaces, large filigree hairpin
and earrings, and various other ornaments.

Chapter 20: Salamanca.

"She is a lucky girl, Terence," Ryan said, as they quitted the
shop. "She will be the envy of all the peasant girls in the
neighbourhood, when she goes to church in all that finery, to be
married to her muleteer."

"It has only cost about twenty pounds, and I value my freedom at a
very much higher price than that, Dick. If I had not escaped, I
should not have been in that affair with Moras that got me my
promotion and, at the present time, should be in some prison in
France."

"You would not have got your majority, I grant, Terence; but
wherever they shut you up, it is morally certain that you would
have been out of it, long before this. I don't think anything less
than being chained hand and foot, and kept in an underground
dungeon, would suffice to hold you."

"I hope that I shall never have to try that experiment, Dicky,"
Terence laughed; "and now, I think you had better go into this
hotel, and order lunch for us both. It is just as well not to
attract attention, by two of us riding to that lane. We have not
done with Marmont, yet, and it may be that the French will be
masters of Salamanca again, before long, and it is just as well not
to get the old man or the girl talked about. I will leave my horse
here, too. See that both of them get a good feed; they have not had
overmuch since we crossed the Aqueda."

As there