luded that having satisfied himself of the main
lines of Marmont's campaign he had gone off to meet and receive fresh
instructions from Wellington, now posting north to save the endangered
magazines.

On the evening of the 16th General Wilson sent for me.

"Here is a nasty piece of news," said he. "Your namesake is a
prisoner."

"Where?"

"In Sabugal; but it seems he was brought there from the main camp
above Penamacor. Trant tells me that you are not only namesakes but
kinsmen. Would you care to question the messenger?"

The messenger was brought in--a peasant from the Penamacor district.
Out of his rambling tale one or two certainties emerged. McNeill--the
celebrated McNeill--was a prisoner; he had been taken on the 14th
somewhere in the pass above Penamacor, and conveyed to Sabugal to
await the French marshal's return. His servant was dead--killed in
trying to escape, or to help his master's escape. So much I sifted
out of the mass of inaccuracies. For, as usual, the two McNeills had
managed to get mixed up in the story, a good half of which spread
itself into a highly coloured version of my own escape from Sabugal on
the evening of the 13th; how I had been arrested by a French officer
in a back shop in the heart of the town; how, as he overhauled my
incriminating papers, I had leapt on him with a knife and stabbed him
to the heart, while my servant did the same with his orderly; how,
having possessed ourselves of their clothes and horses, we had ridden
boldly through the gate and southward to join Lord Wellington; and a
great deal more equally veracious. As I listened I began to understand
how legends grow and demigods are made.

It was flattering; but without attempting to show how I managed to
disengage the facts, I will here quote the plain account of them, sent
to me long afterwards by Captain Alan himself:--

_Captain Alan McNeill's Statement_.

"You wish, for use in your _Memoirs_, an account of my capture in the
month of April, 1811, and the death of my faithful servant, Jose. I
imagine this does not include an account of all our movements from the
time you left us at Tammames (though this, too, I shall be happy to
send if desired), and so I come at once to the 14th, the actual date
of the capture.

"The preceding night we had spent in the woods below the great French
camp, and perhaps a mile above the mouth of the pass opening on
Penamacor. All through the previous day there had been considerab