of Pampeluna to Rita's prison, still appeared almost insuperable. Could
the expedition have commenced and terminated between sunset and sunrise,
a party of active guerillas, well acquainted with the country and
accustomed to such enterprises, might have accomplished it without
incurring more than a moderate amount of danger; but, at that season of
the year especially, a great part of the march would have to be made in
broad daylight, through a district whose population was exclusively
Carlist, and which was occupied by detachments and garrisons of the
Pretender's troops. Indeed the risk was so great and manifest, and the
chances of success apparently so slender, that Cordova, when applied to
by Herrera, at first positively refused to allow him to go on so mad an
expedition. He at last yielded to the young man's reiterated entreaties,
and even permitted Torres to accompany his friend, but refused to give
them any troops of the line, saying, however, that the Mochuelo might
go, if willing. That he was so, the reader, after the glimpse that has
been given of the guerilla's daring character and impatience of
inaction, will have small difficulty in conjecturing. He acknowledged
that the proposed expedition was most difficult and dangerous; but
confident in his own resources, and in the men under his command, he by
no means despaired of its being successful. He should have liked, he
said, to postpone it for two or three days, in order to send out spies
and ascertain the exact position of the Carlist troops; but on learning
from Herrera how urgent it was to lose no time, and how fatal might be
the delay of even a single day, he made no further difficulties, but
agreed to start at once.

Although in the month of July, the night was overcast and dark when the
little band who undertook this perilous service left the town of
Pampeluna, and, passing through the outer fortifications, struck into
the open country. It consisted of four horsemen and two to three hundred
foot soldiers, the latter almost without exception young men between
twenty and thirty years of age, scarcely one of whom but might have been
cited as an example of the highest perfection of hardiness and activity
to which the human frame can be brought by constant exposure to climate,
by habit of exertion and endurance of fatigue. Long-limbed, muscular and
wiry, lightly clad in costumes remarkable for their picturesque and
fantastical variety; unencumbered by knapsacks