, taking care to keep as near the regulars as we
could. "Nada--nothing," cried the captain to an inquiring lady on a
balcony, and the town-gates were closed after the volunteers had
returned and tramped to the Plaza with the proud bearing of citizens who
had done their duty.

How that heroic Tomas did strut! A fighter he of the choicest brand, one
not to stop at trifles; there was martial ire in his flaming glance;
defiance breathed from his nostrils; triumph sat on his lips; he swung
his arms like destructive flails; and as he entered a tavern one could
only fancy him calling in a voice of Stentor for a jug of rum and blood
plentifully besprinkled with gunpowder and cayenne pepper to assuage the
thirst of combat.

O'Donovan gave me his letter. Barbarossa hinted that it was our best
course to slope, and slope we did, as soon as the horse was harnessed.
As we passed down the street a grinning face saluted me from a doorway.
It was that of my acquaintance from the barber's shop. He gave me a
meaning wink. The artful Carlists had evidently succeeded in their
object, whatever it might have been. On the river-bank our fair and
faithful ferry-maid awaited us. We were conveyed over in safety, and at
the hotel of Hendaye soon forgot the perils we had encountered.

Barbarossa was dead-beat, and threw himself on a sofa, where he sank
back heavy-eyed and exhausted; and I, almost feared that he would drop
into a coma, as the penalty of overstraining nature, until the sight of
a pack of cards restored him as if by a spell to his normal wakefulness.

Even in a disturbed region it is needful to have a change of linen, so
we got back next morning to St. Jean de Luz, where I had left my
baggage. There I met M. Thieblin, a colleague, whom I had seen last at
Metz, previous to the siege of that fortress in the Franco-German war.
He was now representing the _New York Herald_, and had just returned
from Estella, at the taking of which place, the most important the
Carlists had yet seized, he had the luck to be present. He assured me
that it was utter fatuity to dream of following the Carlists, except I
had at least one horse--but that it would be sensible to take two if I
could manage to procure them. It was more than an ordinary man was
qualified to cope with, to make his observations, write his letters, and
look after their transmission, without having to attend to his nag, and
do an odd turn of cooking at a pinch. The riddle was how to