river here, and
we had a battalion of infantry quartered about the village--sixteen
under our roof--and all extraordinarily thirsty fellows for Frenchmen;
besides a squadron of cavalry, vedettes of which constantly patrolled
the farther bank of the Tormes. The cavalry officers kept their
chargers--six in all--in the ramshackle stable in the court-yard
facing the inn; and since (as my master explained to me the first
morning) it was a tradition of the posada to combine the duties of
tapster and ostler in one person, I found all the exercise I needed
in running between the cellar and the great kitchen, and between the
kitchen and the stable, where the troopers had always a job for me,
and allowed me in return to join in their talk. They seemed to think
this an adequate reward, and I did not grumble.

Now, beside the stable, and divided from it by a midden-heap, there
stood at the back of the inn a small outhouse with a loft. This in
more prosperous days had accommodated the master's own mule, but now
was stored with empty barrels, strings of onions, and trusses of
hay--which last had been hastily removed from the larger stable when
the troopers took possession. Here I slept by night, for lack of room
indoors, and also to guard the fodder--an arrangement which suited me
admirably, since it left me my own master for six or seven hours of
the twenty-four. My bedroom furniture consisted of a truss of hay, a
lantern, a tinder-box, and a rusty fowling piece. For my toilet I went
to the bucket in the stable yard.

On the fifth night, having some particular information to send to
headquarters, I made a cautious expedition to the place agreed upon
with my messenger--a fairly intelligent muleteer, and honest, but new
to the business. We met in the garden at the rear of his cottage,
conveniently approached by way of the ill-kept cemetery which stood
at the end of the village. If surprised, I was to act the nocturnal
lover, and he the angry defender of his sister's reputation--a foolish
but not ill-looking girl, to whom I had confided nothing beyond a few
amorous glances, so that her evidence (if unluckily needed) might
carry all the weight of an obvious incapacity to invent or deceive.

These precautions proved unnecessary. But my muleteer, though plucky,
was nervous, and I had to repeat my instructions at least thrice in
detail before I felt easy. Also he brought news of a fresh movement
of battalions behind Huerta, and of a sen