Peter the Renegade
by S. R. Crockett
Genre: Drama
Swearwords: None.
Description: EPISODE THREE – The Treasure Seeking.
Swearwords: None.
Description: EPISODE THREE – The Treasure Seeking.
Peter Blake, Scottish adventurer, late of the East India Company’s service, late also Scout-Master of His Majesty’s 4th Dragoons, has lost despatches and almost wrecked an army by one bout of wine-drinking. Sir John Moore is falling back to the sea, the French under Soult following in overwhelming numbers . Peter having only the gallows to expect, slips out between the armies and finds a new life as a captain of Spanish guerrillas. He is angry at the death of two companions, renegades like himself, and starts off, greatly re-inforced, to help the French to capture Moore at Corunna. But the sight of the red uniforms, and a chance meeting with a young officer of his country, work a sudden conversion. To enable the British to hold out till the ships arrive, he charges the French artillery establishing itself on a hill, puts the gunners to flight, and destroys the guns. Returning to his own guerrilla band, he awaits the spring, maturing plans for the recovery of sixty thousand pounds’ worth of treasure abandoned during the flight to Corunna in the Gorges of Escaldos.
‘Froyla,’ said Peter to his acting lieutenant, ‘’tis just as well these fellows went back to Molinos. That leaves us a neat twenty-five, ourselves included, and still more than enough to keep a secret.’
‘But a score of men can do so little,’ objected the girl, swinging her legs discontentedly over the fallen pine on which she was seated, oiling and cleaning a pistol. Her superior officer, stretched at her feet, after making grave choice of the most succulent stems, at grass after the manner of Nebuchadnezzar.
They were in the lowest corner of Roz Alva, the huge forest which runs along the southern side of the Cantabridgian range from Corunna to Santander. Oak and chestnut stretched below from horizon to horizon. Pine and birch rose behind in serried files, sending scouting parties of dark green seedlings right up to the shale-slides and the snow.
‘It is better,’ said Peter calmly finishing the succulent white of his grass stem, ‘to have twenty-five men and sleep contentedly than two hundred and wake up with your throat cut.’
‘Why did you give up?’ said Froyla, still refractory. ‘I like men who succeed.’
Peter made a grimace with the new stalk he was choosing.
‘I like to succeed myself,’ he answered, biting the choice morsel between his firm white teeth, ‘but not when the price is too high. First of all, merely to feed two hundred men means frank plunder and the hatred of every village within forty miles. When the armies have moved on, you must follow likewise, as the vulture follows the carrion. You must plunder. You must let the men run free. You have dead fathers lying across violated thresholds. You ride away pursued by the curses of mothers. No, Froyla, we have quite enough down yonder’ (he pointed to the cluster of wooden huts down in a clearing made by the wood-cutters of El Roz). ‘Twenty-five honest fellows who will obey without question and follow where I lead them, who gather their own crops, and are everywhere welcome because they are Cardoños and Feliçés from La Giralda. Defile not your own nest Froyla!’
‘I defile not my own nest,’ said the girl, ‘and I know better than you the worth of my own kin. But you have forgotten the strangers. Are they safe? Are they obedient?’
‘Both safe and obedient when I have the leading of them,’ exclaimed Peter Blake. ‘Has any one of them dared---?’
‘No – no,’ said Froyla, who dreaded Peter’s sudden and violent fits of passion; ‘none of them has spoken word or laid hand upon me. No one has been lacking in respect.’
‘Just as well,’ growled Peter, completely awakened now, ‘or I should have hung him as high as I did Long Ben Davis on the road between Leon and Astorga.’
Froyla shuddered at the memory. Twelve renegades, mostly English, but one or two French, had gradually joined the band and had soon proved the most dangerous and unmanageable elements in it. They denied all authority except that of the strongest hand and readiest knife. But on this basis Peter was by no means slack to argue with them. Of the twelve remained only four. The others had found Peter a nut beyond their powers to crack.
Some had died sudden and violent deaths. Others had been condemned in full council and adjudged to die in the dawn with all the forms, but most had melted away in search of other bands where liberty was greater and risks fewer.
Four only remained, survivors of the fiery furnace of Peter’s wrath. First came Cherry Bates, formerly chief cook to General Moore’s staff, a smooth, plausible man, good looking in the red-cheeked, soft-fleshed Devonshire manner, but really a thievish adventurer, too craven to be dangerous, and as a cook honest enough when someone else did the marketing.
Of quite other metal were the two Donegal men – the ‘Papes’ as they had been called in the regiment – ancient rebels of ‘ninety-eight, raparees and moonlighters, blood-money on their heads, murder on their souls. But gay dogs and rollicking jesters for all that, whose songs and dances enlivened any company.
The ‘Papes’ were named Kinstrey and O’Hanlon, the latter having escaped on the morning of Corunna. They came from the bay of Killibegs – which for unknown reasons is called the Holy Sea. Instead of which certain wise men would read the ‘Holy See,’ and surcharge the calendar of Ireland with an unnamed saint who landed there and built of clay and wattle the church of which only the noble name has come down – ‘The Little House of the Great King.’
Kinstrey and O’Hanlon would stand by each other against all comers till the day came for the equal division of the spoils. Then inevitably Kinstrey would kill O’Hanlon or O’Hanlon Kinstrey. And whichever way the thing turned out, the earth would be the wholesomer for one ruffian the less upon its face.
Of quite another type was Ephraim Marrowman, formerly quartermaster to my Lord Nelson, a West Country ‘Seceder,’ kirk-elder, developed by the hazard of voyages into a ‘hot-gospeller,’ or Wesleyan local preacher, and severe critic of all men’s morals save his own. Ephraim was nevertheless a man exceptionally worldly wise, daring upon occasion, patient always, hovering silently, but with talons ever ready for the pounce, over any advantage.
Peter asked no questions of Ephraim Marrowman, but judged that it must have been some matter of contraband or shady contractor’s deal which had brought a man so staid and severe among those outcasts of twenty races who slew and were slain in the rear of the Peninsular armies.
From this man alone of all the renegades some reasonable help was to be hoped. His interests and his instincts were with the forces of order, and so long as Peter could make it worth his while Ephraim Marrowman was his to command.
‘You must, of course, know best,’ said Froyla, who could not abide the stiff-lipped man who looked at her with cold, disapproving eyes, ‘but I prefer any of the other three.’
‘I do know best,’ said Peer, suddenly truculent. ‘I can judge my own people. And do not let me see you talking to Bates or the Teagues. They will need to be settled with some fine morning when very suddenly I shall have need of a friend at my back.
‘Well, I shall be that friend,’ said Froyla jealously, ‘Let old Crosspatch go about his business.’
Peter sat down on the great log, bestriding it, and placed his elbows on his knees. Then he leaned his chin upon his plaited knuckles and looked into the girl’s eyes.
‘Froyla,’ he said, ‘when the band has worn itself down to two, I have a piece of work which will be worth the doing.’
‘Worn itself down to two – the band? Froyla gazed at him wonderingly. ‘Who are the two?’
‘You and I.’
Froyla’s eyes glittered and darkened as they did when she was angry.
‘You and I – we two – no more?’
Peter nodded, and drawing clear whispered, ‘I know where the troop pay-chests were abandoned with all the army treasure. If the French do not find it, which is little like, you and I are rich, Froyla.’
‘I thought they flung the gold in handfuls down the rocks so that the French and the peasants scrambled for it among the stones and grass.’
Peter smiled a quiet smile.
‘I left the chests in a safe place,’ he said, ‘but I filled my pockets with gold and sowed them down the steep places as I went so there is none within a league of the main treasure, which is lying waiting for us in a gorge I know of.’
‘I am to go with you?’ Froyla inquired.
‘We two – no others,’ said Peter, ‘and we must find a good excuse which will explain a prolonged absence. I have thought of one.’
‘Ah!’ said Froyla softly, ‘so have I.’
‘Good,’ said Peter cheerfully, ‘yours is probably the best. At any rate, let us have it.’
I am promised to marry Juan Julio Felicé. You shall be my sponsor. You can pretend to be my cavalier servente. Then it will seem quite natural that you and I should go away together. Juan Julio is an old man, you understand, older than my father, and it is done for the sake of the family to keep the lands and properties together. That is nothing to me.’
‘But it is a great deal to me,’ said Peter promptly. ‘I will be no cavalier servente. I must be your husband and none other, and if any cavalier comes after you I will serve him as William of Cabestan served the troubadour -.’
‘And how did he serve him?’ said Froyla, looking up from the cigarette she was rolling so deftly in a single blonde leaf.
‘At supper, in a pie!’ affirmed Peter viciously.
‘But why – was it not the custom of the country?’
‘It is not the custom of honest men who love their wives.’
‘Sangre meo, but it is curious,’ said Froyla, much interested, ‘I have read of such things in old books. But it is – oh, so stupid and old-fashioned, like Don Quixote and his suit of armour.’
‘By the Lord! Then I shall set a new fashion,’ cried Peter, crushing an imaginary cavalier servente in the palm of his hand.
‘But what difference can it make to you?’ said Froyla. ‘I have been well brought up, and I know what is due. What difference can a wizened old ape like Juan Julio Feliçé make to you, if all the Giralda is ours to the foothills of Ludo? It is important for the families that these be kept together. Otherwise we shall have vendetta quarrels perpetually, and everyone will say what a bad daughter I have been.’
‘Let them,’ Peter broke forth eruptively; ‘let them go warm their toes at the devil’s hearth! Mark you, Froyla, I am going to marry you – first point – no cavalier-at-secondhand business for me. Now, second point, you love me Froyla?’
Froyla nodded assent with a smile which meant ‘Of course I do, otherwise would I be following you about, serving in your company and proposing to accept you, in spite of your curious foreign scruples as squire and cavalier?’
Froyla’s smile and the way she had of opening out the palms of her hands said all that.
Reassured, Peter continued.
‘Then I shall go and ask your father for your hand. We shall have enough treasure to buy out the Feliçés, lock, stock and barrel, with the vineyards of Carda and the orchards of Ludo. He would consent then, I think?’
Froyla put her fingers among the tightly curled locks of the man at her knee. How (she thought) could she make him understand that the marriage was a mere family arrangement – that it made no difference – that every one would understand and approve?
His objection appeared to her a want of delicacy, even of moral sense; but instinctively, like all women, she was thrilled by quixotry when the man is quixotic for their sakes.
So she pulled at Peter’s hair before she answered him with a kind of gentle recognisant pity.
‘You have not the treasure!’ she said; ‘you can only say you know where it is. Everyone says that. Gallicia is a land of hidden treasure. All the galleons cast away between Portugal and the Lion of Vigo carried gold, and all is hidden away here. Not true? Perhaps not, but at any rate the Gallegans believe it.’
‘We shall have the gold in hand - English guineas every coin of it. Have I not sown a few down a score of precipices to keep the hounds well away from the quarry?’
Froyla sighed and pulled gently at the short curls which tightened about his neck.
She had been brought up all her life in the knowledge that she was to marry Juan Julio Feliçé – so much so that it seemed as if the thing were already done. In the country of Giralda they were treated upon state occasions as married persons. Juan Julio was sixty-eight years of age, an ancient smuggler and famous frontier fighter, but for many years chained to his chair in the corner of the family house of the Feliçés, having been touched more than ten years ago by the finger of partial paralysis.
Now for the sake of the lands and heritages, intact and considerable, it was necessary that Froyla should wed old Juan Julio. Equally necessary was it that in the interest of posterity she should immediately make choice of a ‘little spouse.’ Everyone understood except this stupid Englishman. Juan Julio himself understood, and would hold the children up at the christening receptions. Did not King Ferdinand the same – Ferdinand for whom they were all fighting – while at the Queen’s right hand handsome Prince Godoy sat smiling?
Of a truth this man from England had no education, no morality. But then he was brave and handsome – masterful too, and accustomed to command. Besides which she loved him. What a pity he was so stubborn! That was the worst of being foreign born, and especially from the North. Froyla sighed again. The path of duty was so obvious and smooth, if only Peter would give himself the trouble of treading it. But then Peter would not – a prejudice most strange – hardly respectable indeed. Yet which somehow warmed the heart of Froyla Cardoños.
To her marriage meant property, the adding of field to field, the consolidation of vested interests – the whole Roman law, in fact which Rome has ground into the very souls of those who inhabit her first and greatest colony.
As for love, that was altogether another affair. What a strange people these English, thus to put the reaping before the sowing! How can any woman tell whom she will love when it is time for her to marry?
But Froyla knew well enough that it was quite useless to argue with an obstinate and hot-headed man like Captain Peter. She must let him come to the sense and meaning of life gradually. He would remain in Gallicia, and in time doubtless would grow to think like a Christian.
But Peter had two fashions of going about an affair so simple. When possible he went straight ahead. If not – well, then he went round about till he could climb over or creep under. The main thing was to get there.
Now he trampled straight before him, for his heart was hot with this abomination, so calmly proposed to him by an innocent girl. He put it down, quite wrongly, to religion and promised a good round sum to the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts.
Froyla watched him as he strode away through the dusky forest glades in which the spring flowers were beginning to bloom faintly blue in the hollows and shady places, pale yellow in the open sandy glades. Oh yes, a man to warm any woman’s heart, and a man who, even if one were to marry would know how to guard his own.
And Froyla rose and followed far off, keeping her misguided Captain in sight, and smiling the demure interior smile of a woman who in the long run is sure of getting her own way.
So Peter, observed of many, strode up the village street of La Giralda. The masons had finished repairing the few damaged houses, but their piles of stone-flakes and snowy chippings still lay about. Peter ascended the steep street with great strides, saluting no one, but with a darkened brow going about his business. Not a ‘Buenos tarde’ was heard. They knew that till he had discharged his thought Peter had no time for salutations. Presently he would reappear smiling, his hands in his pockets, and ready for a chat with the world. But for the affairs of the Band they let him alone. It was safest so, they whispered. Captain Peter was not always good to approach when he had grave matters on his mind. He passed his own lodging, next door to the house of Severino Cardoños; up and up he climbed till he found himself in the Feliçé quarter, and there (marvel of marvels!) he entered the house of Juan Julio – and shut the door after him.
Now except when it was a case of defending a house against an enemy, or a driving winter rain-storm from the Atlantic, one does not shut doors in Gallicia, nor indeed in anywhere in Spain out of Castille. All stands open and everyone enters as into a mill.
Peter found the old man, his head a little sunk on his breast among the silken waves of a white beard, which he combed incessantly till it had a lustre like floss-silk. The visitor did not beat about the bush.
‘Don Juan Julio,’ he said, ‘I have come to speak with you about Froyla.’
The veteran continued to caress his beard with the single hand which remained to him.
He fixed Peter with the brightness of his left eye, which still burned keen like a lantern in a ruined house after nightfall.
‘Early days, Señor Capitano,’ he murmured in a voice wholly without modulation, ‘to be speaking to me about Froyla Cardoños. But say on young man – say on!’
‘We love one another, Juan Julio, and I have come here to tell you.’
‘Well, well,’ said the old man, nodding his head tolerantly and paternally, as if he listened to the prattle of babes. ‘Well, well, I do not know that she could have chosen a better. They say you are a brave man, that you beat Molinos, who vaunted himself the best blade in all the Western Spains. You will make me respected, and my children shall be noble babes.’
‘But I will not have Froyla married to you, Don Juan Julio. I shall marry her myself.’
The old man’s hand stopped caressing his silken beard, and he fixed Peter with his solitary eye. Had he heard aright, or had the young man gone suddenly mad?
‘Eh!’ he said, ‘say that again!’
Peter repeated his objection to anybody but himself marrying Froyla, but the old man cut him short.
‘If she does not marry me she will have to marry Don Thomas Feliçé, who is a young man and will want a wife for himself.’
‘But that is just what I want – a wife for myself,’ cried Peter who was beginning to be seriously angry.
‘It is an unsettled time. I should think twice before encumbering yourself. You may change your flag again and then you leave hostages behind you. Besides, as like as not a wife would get you into trouble with Froyla; for she comes of a quick tempered race, and our women have high sentiments about the loyalty of their lovers. Ah, she is well-bred Froyla – she has all the delicacies! I will wager she never sent you on this fool’s errand.’
‘Indeed no,’ Peter admitted.
‘Indeed she did not seem to understand.’
‘A good girl, Froyla Cardoños and deserves her luck. Listen, man, if there be any sense in a young man’s head. I shall not be here long. My old bones will hamper you not at all. These are my wants – a sop and my potions, a stout wench to rub my legs when the wind is in the east. For the rest, go your own way. And as soon as the spring grass is over me you can go before the priest, if the thought takes you – a little penance, a few aves to say, and you are married safe and sound – you have the girl and the lands too.’
Abruptly Peter abandoned argument and tried corruption. The moral principles of La Giralda were very firmly fixed.
‘What is the value of the Feliçé lands in question?’
‘Let me see – let me see; the vineyards are the best in the country and the charcoal woods, the high pastures, ten campos, besides the wheatfields by the river, thirty houses with barns and stables. By holy St. Vincent, it is an evil time to sell with bands and brigands and foreign armies. But never a maravedi less than fifty thousand duros would buy all that.
‘Very well,’ said Peter, reaching for his hat, ‘that makes ten thousand English guineas. I will go and get them. We shall bring back a notary with us, so have your papers ready.’
‘And you have all that money hidden away?’ exclaimed the patriarch, twisting his beard in his excitement. ‘You who came to the campo in the rags of an English uniform?’
Then a new thought struck him.
‘But why will you give all that money for what in a few years, most likely in a few months, you would have for nothing?’
But Peter was already striding down the valley in search of Froyla. He had no time to answer questions.
Already Peter and Froyla had been three days on the hills without venturing to descend towards the densely-wooded region between Nogales and Bembibre, where the treasure had been abandoned. The first day they had spent in manœvering for safety. Froyla, interested in the matter as an adventure, and happy, because she could be with Peter, captured and drove off to a secret campo a couple of her father’s best mules, with pack saddles and loading gear all complete. She was back before daybreak, and in the afternoon the two departed, ostensibly directing their march towards Campostella along the track by which General Frazer’s army had made its weary and useless march.
It was certain that they would be watched. Juan Julio was cunning and would send his young men to discover Peter’s hiding-place. The hillsides sown with gold had excited all the north, and many lives had been lost, either by the slipping of a foot on perilous crags, or by the long-range practice of the French voltigeurs, who from their posts on the opposite hill shot down the gold-seekers like crows.
But as soon as night fell, Peter and Froyla left the warm shelter of the hayshed where they had passed the afternoon, quite silent, listening to the mild tinkle-tankle of the cowbells in the pastures, the light air-born noises from the little village far beneath in its trough of restless leaves and running waters. The crickets had sung all day in the pastures. The torrents boiled and raced. The rays of sunshine in which the motes danced wheeled across the hay like the hands of a clock as the sun swung slowly westward.
At last they saw the last light go out in the village, and hand in hand they stole out, the grasshoppers still busy about them, and took their way down towards Froyla’s high campo. Through meadows where the cows still tinkled and scented the air with the sweetness of their breath, springing from boulder to boulder across torrents where the basalt rocks showed black in the midst of white tormented water, up, down, and across, till after a final wait of half an hour to make sure that all was silent and solitary, they reached the goal.
There were the mules at last, moving restlessly and pining for deliverance. Forward then; there before them were the wild peaks under the stars, and the last pasture of all from which the snows of the year had hardly had time to melt, yet through which the gentian and the dwarf foxglove of the Sierras were already pushing. Higher still the pass was wholly sterile, the rock scarps bare, denuded of vegetation, the precipices abrupt, and the single path narrow and dangerous. They were getting near the gorge of Escaldos where four men – three of whom were now dead – had hidden away the treasure of golden guineas abandoned by their general.
For Moore had been resolved that nothing should for a moment delay his getting to his ships.
‘But it is money!’ the officers who were ordered to lighten the retreat of the rearguard had objected, with inherent British awe for the stamped and milled image of their sovereign.
‘Money is it?’ exclaimed Moore. ‘Well, so is powder and shot. Over with it!’
But four men charged with the conduct of the operation saved the treasure chests, hid them in a cleft of the rock high up a side alley, and were back in time to be caught by a hailstorm of bullets from the sharpshooters of Lagrange’s brigade.
Only the ex-scoutmaster of dragoons remained, and he looked upon the abandoned guineas as his undeniable property. He had been ordered to throw them over a cliff. He had saved them at the risk of his own life and the cost of three other lives. He was besides no longer in the English service; and in any case it could be argued that so soon as the General had cast the treasure out of his baggage train it became anybody’s property, and in no wise that of any British Government.
Not that Peter troubled himself with scruples and fine distinctions. If he could get the money he would not argue about questions concerning the right of trover.
But when at last Peter and his lieutenant looked down upon the gorge of Escaldos it was a mere drove-road of hurrying regiments, artillery, all Soult’s baggage train, tumbling flamboyantly southward to support the King. Romana might go where he liked. The French were evacuating Gallicia. The northern ports were deserted by their garrisons, all because there was news of the arrival of one man on the Tagus – a certain Sir Arthur Wellesley, with some Indian reputation, but apparently quite unable with twenty thousand troops to oppose the pick of Napoleon’s marshals, trained by the greatest master of war the world ever saw, and experienced in every corner of Europe.
Nevertheless instinct warned Soult that the new man would bear watching, and so, leaving an indignant Ney to shift for himself, he poured his army southward to the relief of King Joseph upon the Tagus.
It was clearly impossible that so long as this tide lasted there could be any safety in the gorge of Escaldos or its tributary defiles. Moreover, they must keep high up, for hard on the heels of the troops, gleaning the spare plunder and slaying all the stragglers, would come the hateful partidas.
So higher and higher among the pines mounted Peter and Froyla with their borrowed mules till they found a camp in a dell where a charcoal-burner had been at work. There they installed their beasts in a cavern still half-filled with charcoal, while they made themselves as comfortable as possible in the hut among the tall trees under the crest of the Sierras, high above everything except the jagged peaks themselves.
As philosophically as possible Peter settled down to wait. He would teach his lieutenant English. He would correct his own Spanish, which, though fluent, bore traces of the tobacco girl of the Havana. But all such projects simmered down into day-long talks, interrupted only by scrappy meals. Peter, with his arms clasped behind his neck, spoke of India and Tippoo Sahib, of the storming of Seringapatam, also of the treasure of the Rajah of Travancore.
Then all suddenly he sprang to his feet, ran to the door, looked about him carefully as if spying certain marks. Memory returned to Peter. He saw on the hillside a hundred yards above him a dark cave-mouth with above it a white stain.
‘Bide where you are Froyla,’ he commanded her. ‘I will bring you an ‘arles’ of the treasure now.’
She watched him climb the rugged side of El Pico with the long, slow strides of a mountaineer. He disappeared, and though she looked eagerly into the noon brilliance, her hand above her brow, she saw nothing except peewits swooping and the long planning flight of the curlews declining towards their nests.
‘Oorli–ooo-ooo–Oourli–oo!’
Presently he was back with something that showed bright in his hand – a long chain, which he threw about her neck, and a gold watch, which he slipped into the sautoir she wore crossed upon her breast, in white leather, burnished, the Imperial eagle upon the shoulder straps, the spoil of some young officer who had dressed himself for the Spanish Sierras as if for an afternoon’s promenade in the Rue de Rivoli. Peter, wholly without pride, but content to prove himself not nameless, showed the inscription inside. She could read his name, and the reason for the gift, ‘for exceptional valour,’ was also plain.
Froyla threw her arms about his neck.
They were true then, all the tales to which she had been listening. They were not mere bubbles of words blown to amuse on a long afternoon.
‘I love you, do you know, Don Peter?’
‘I know,’ said Peter, not at all surprised; ‘but why particularly now?’
‘Because it is all true.’
‘And you thought it was not?’
‘I thought it kind of you to amuse me -’
‘Oh,’ said Peter, ‘if I had taken the trouble to lie I could have told you some really remarkable things. But between you and me, the truth will serve our turn.’
They went back to the hut, and she sat down beside him, her cheek pressed closely against his.
‘Will it ever go – this watch? Will it tell the time?’
‘As soon as I get a key in any town – a few pennies buy one.’
Froyla clapped her hands.
‘Then I shall be able to tell the time.’
‘But you have only to look at the sun.’
‘I know – but at night.’
‘The stars.’
‘Then what is the good of a watch?’ demanded Froyla, impatiently tapping her foot on the floor of split pine saplings.
‘Not much,’ owned Peter, ‘but it is pretty, and – wait a moment – look at the hour the hands are marking – five hours less a quarter.’
‘Pray heaven the thing is working,’ he thought as he pulled the lever. ‘Listen!’ he exclaimed when he caught the preliminary click and purr of the escapement.
‘It will speak for itself. Four strokes slow and mellow – four o’clock – ting-ting-tang thrice repeated - three-quarters – then one small ping, very distant and clear, makes one minute more. So you can always tell the time in the darkest room in the blackest night.’
‘Oh!’ cried Froyla, ‘I shall always sleep with my shutters closed on purpose.’
That night Peter, who soldier-like slept in a shed outside on a bed of heather and romarin, awoke to a warm rain of tears and the sound of sobbing. He sat up in a moment.
‘What is the matter?’ Why have you left your bed in the hut? Why are you dressed at this hour?’
‘I am so happy – I could not sleep.’
‘Good luck! But why?’ said Peter. ‘Happiness never keeps me awake. But why cry?’
‘Because you are such a true man and I love you.’
‘Well,’ sighed Peter, kissing her gently, ‘that is the treasure. The other doesn’t matter three pins.’
‘Oh but it does!’ cried the true daughter of the house of Cardoños. ‘I want that too.’
‘Froyla,’ said Peter to his acting lieutenant, ‘’tis just as well these fellows went back to Molinos. That leaves us a neat twenty-five, ourselves included, and still more than enough to keep a secret.’
‘But a score of men can do so little,’ objected the girl, swinging her legs discontentedly over the fallen pine on which she was seated, oiling and cleaning a pistol. Her superior officer, stretched at her feet, after making grave choice of the most succulent stems, at grass after the manner of Nebuchadnezzar.
They were in the lowest corner of Roz Alva, the huge forest which runs along the southern side of the Cantabridgian range from Corunna to Santander. Oak and chestnut stretched below from horizon to horizon. Pine and birch rose behind in serried files, sending scouting parties of dark green seedlings right up to the shale-slides and the snow.
‘It is better,’ said Peter calmly finishing the succulent white of his grass stem, ‘to have twenty-five men and sleep contentedly than two hundred and wake up with your throat cut.’
‘Why did you give up?’ said Froyla, still refractory. ‘I like men who succeed.’
Peter made a grimace with the new stalk he was choosing.
‘I like to succeed myself,’ he answered, biting the choice morsel between his firm white teeth, ‘but not when the price is too high. First of all, merely to feed two hundred men means frank plunder and the hatred of every village within forty miles. When the armies have moved on, you must follow likewise, as the vulture follows the carrion. You must plunder. You must let the men run free. You have dead fathers lying across violated thresholds. You ride away pursued by the curses of mothers. No, Froyla, we have quite enough down yonder’ (he pointed to the cluster of wooden huts down in a clearing made by the wood-cutters of El Roz). ‘Twenty-five honest fellows who will obey without question and follow where I lead them, who gather their own crops, and are everywhere welcome because they are Cardoños and Feliçés from La Giralda. Defile not your own nest Froyla!’
‘I defile not my own nest,’ said the girl, ‘and I know better than you the worth of my own kin. But you have forgotten the strangers. Are they safe? Are they obedient?’
‘Both safe and obedient when I have the leading of them,’ exclaimed Peter Blake. ‘Has any one of them dared---?’
‘No – no,’ said Froyla, who dreaded Peter’s sudden and violent fits of passion; ‘none of them has spoken word or laid hand upon me. No one has been lacking in respect.’
‘Just as well,’ growled Peter, completely awakened now, ‘or I should have hung him as high as I did Long Ben Davis on the road between Leon and Astorga.’
Froyla shuddered at the memory. Twelve renegades, mostly English, but one or two French, had gradually joined the band and had soon proved the most dangerous and unmanageable elements in it. They denied all authority except that of the strongest hand and readiest knife. But on this basis Peter was by no means slack to argue with them. Of the twelve remained only four. The others had found Peter a nut beyond their powers to crack.
Some had died sudden and violent deaths. Others had been condemned in full council and adjudged to die in the dawn with all the forms, but most had melted away in search of other bands where liberty was greater and risks fewer.
Four only remained, survivors of the fiery furnace of Peter’s wrath. First came Cherry Bates, formerly chief cook to General Moore’s staff, a smooth, plausible man, good looking in the red-cheeked, soft-fleshed Devonshire manner, but really a thievish adventurer, too craven to be dangerous, and as a cook honest enough when someone else did the marketing.
Of quite other metal were the two Donegal men – the ‘Papes’ as they had been called in the regiment – ancient rebels of ‘ninety-eight, raparees and moonlighters, blood-money on their heads, murder on their souls. But gay dogs and rollicking jesters for all that, whose songs and dances enlivened any company.
The ‘Papes’ were named Kinstrey and O’Hanlon, the latter having escaped on the morning of Corunna. They came from the bay of Killibegs – which for unknown reasons is called the Holy Sea. Instead of which certain wise men would read the ‘Holy See,’ and surcharge the calendar of Ireland with an unnamed saint who landed there and built of clay and wattle the church of which only the noble name has come down – ‘The Little House of the Great King.’
Kinstrey and O’Hanlon would stand by each other against all comers till the day came for the equal division of the spoils. Then inevitably Kinstrey would kill O’Hanlon or O’Hanlon Kinstrey. And whichever way the thing turned out, the earth would be the wholesomer for one ruffian the less upon its face.
Of quite another type was Ephraim Marrowman, formerly quartermaster to my Lord Nelson, a West Country ‘Seceder,’ kirk-elder, developed by the hazard of voyages into a ‘hot-gospeller,’ or Wesleyan local preacher, and severe critic of all men’s morals save his own. Ephraim was nevertheless a man exceptionally worldly wise, daring upon occasion, patient always, hovering silently, but with talons ever ready for the pounce, over any advantage.
Peter asked no questions of Ephraim Marrowman, but judged that it must have been some matter of contraband or shady contractor’s deal which had brought a man so staid and severe among those outcasts of twenty races who slew and were slain in the rear of the Peninsular armies.
From this man alone of all the renegades some reasonable help was to be hoped. His interests and his instincts were with the forces of order, and so long as Peter could make it worth his while Ephraim Marrowman was his to command.
‘You must, of course, know best,’ said Froyla, who could not abide the stiff-lipped man who looked at her with cold, disapproving eyes, ‘but I prefer any of the other three.’
‘I do know best,’ said Peer, suddenly truculent. ‘I can judge my own people. And do not let me see you talking to Bates or the Teagues. They will need to be settled with some fine morning when very suddenly I shall have need of a friend at my back.
‘Well, I shall be that friend,’ said Froyla jealously, ‘Let old Crosspatch go about his business.’
Peter sat down on the great log, bestriding it, and placed his elbows on his knees. Then he leaned his chin upon his plaited knuckles and looked into the girl’s eyes.
‘Froyla,’ he said, ‘when the band has worn itself down to two, I have a piece of work which will be worth the doing.’
‘Worn itself down to two – the band? Froyla gazed at him wonderingly. ‘Who are the two?’
‘You and I.’
Froyla’s eyes glittered and darkened as they did when she was angry.
‘You and I – we two – no more?’
Peter nodded, and drawing clear whispered, ‘I know where the troop pay-chests were abandoned with all the army treasure. If the French do not find it, which is little like, you and I are rich, Froyla.’
‘I thought they flung the gold in handfuls down the rocks so that the French and the peasants scrambled for it among the stones and grass.’
Peter smiled a quiet smile.
‘I left the chests in a safe place,’ he said, ‘but I filled my pockets with gold and sowed them down the steep places as I went so there is none within a league of the main treasure, which is lying waiting for us in a gorge I know of.’
‘I am to go with you?’ Froyla inquired.
‘We two – no others,’ said Peter, ‘and we must find a good excuse which will explain a prolonged absence. I have thought of one.’
‘Ah!’ said Froyla softly, ‘so have I.’
‘Good,’ said Peter cheerfully, ‘yours is probably the best. At any rate, let us have it.’
I am promised to marry Juan Julio Felicé. You shall be my sponsor. You can pretend to be my cavalier servente. Then it will seem quite natural that you and I should go away together. Juan Julio is an old man, you understand, older than my father, and it is done for the sake of the family to keep the lands and properties together. That is nothing to me.’
‘But it is a great deal to me,’ said Peter promptly. ‘I will be no cavalier servente. I must be your husband and none other, and if any cavalier comes after you I will serve him as William of Cabestan served the troubadour -.’
‘And how did he serve him?’ said Froyla, looking up from the cigarette she was rolling so deftly in a single blonde leaf.
‘At supper, in a pie!’ affirmed Peter viciously.
‘But why – was it not the custom of the country?’
‘It is not the custom of honest men who love their wives.’
‘Sangre meo, but it is curious,’ said Froyla, much interested, ‘I have read of such things in old books. But it is – oh, so stupid and old-fashioned, like Don Quixote and his suit of armour.’
‘By the Lord! Then I shall set a new fashion,’ cried Peter, crushing an imaginary cavalier servente in the palm of his hand.
‘But what difference can it make to you?’ said Froyla. ‘I have been well brought up, and I know what is due. What difference can a wizened old ape like Juan Julio Feliçé make to you, if all the Giralda is ours to the foothills of Ludo? It is important for the families that these be kept together. Otherwise we shall have vendetta quarrels perpetually, and everyone will say what a bad daughter I have been.’
‘Let them,’ Peter broke forth eruptively; ‘let them go warm their toes at the devil’s hearth! Mark you, Froyla, I am going to marry you – first point – no cavalier-at-secondhand business for me. Now, second point, you love me Froyla?’
Froyla nodded assent with a smile which meant ‘Of course I do, otherwise would I be following you about, serving in your company and proposing to accept you, in spite of your curious foreign scruples as squire and cavalier?’
Froyla’s smile and the way she had of opening out the palms of her hands said all that.
Reassured, Peter continued.
‘Then I shall go and ask your father for your hand. We shall have enough treasure to buy out the Feliçés, lock, stock and barrel, with the vineyards of Carda and the orchards of Ludo. He would consent then, I think?’
Froyla put her fingers among the tightly curled locks of the man at her knee. How (she thought) could she make him understand that the marriage was a mere family arrangement – that it made no difference – that every one would understand and approve?
His objection appeared to her a want of delicacy, even of moral sense; but instinctively, like all women, she was thrilled by quixotry when the man is quixotic for their sakes.
So she pulled at Peter’s hair before she answered him with a kind of gentle recognisant pity.
‘You have not the treasure!’ she said; ‘you can only say you know where it is. Everyone says that. Gallicia is a land of hidden treasure. All the galleons cast away between Portugal and the Lion of Vigo carried gold, and all is hidden away here. Not true? Perhaps not, but at any rate the Gallegans believe it.’
‘We shall have the gold in hand - English guineas every coin of it. Have I not sown a few down a score of precipices to keep the hounds well away from the quarry?’
Froyla sighed and pulled gently at the short curls which tightened about his neck.
She had been brought up all her life in the knowledge that she was to marry Juan Julio Feliçé – so much so that it seemed as if the thing were already done. In the country of Giralda they were treated upon state occasions as married persons. Juan Julio was sixty-eight years of age, an ancient smuggler and famous frontier fighter, but for many years chained to his chair in the corner of the family house of the Feliçés, having been touched more than ten years ago by the finger of partial paralysis.
Now for the sake of the lands and heritages, intact and considerable, it was necessary that Froyla should wed old Juan Julio. Equally necessary was it that in the interest of posterity she should immediately make choice of a ‘little spouse.’ Everyone understood except this stupid Englishman. Juan Julio himself understood, and would hold the children up at the christening receptions. Did not King Ferdinand the same – Ferdinand for whom they were all fighting – while at the Queen’s right hand handsome Prince Godoy sat smiling?
Of a truth this man from England had no education, no morality. But then he was brave and handsome – masterful too, and accustomed to command. Besides which she loved him. What a pity he was so stubborn! That was the worst of being foreign born, and especially from the North. Froyla sighed again. The path of duty was so obvious and smooth, if only Peter would give himself the trouble of treading it. But then Peter would not – a prejudice most strange – hardly respectable indeed. Yet which somehow warmed the heart of Froyla Cardoños.
To her marriage meant property, the adding of field to field, the consolidation of vested interests – the whole Roman law, in fact which Rome has ground into the very souls of those who inhabit her first and greatest colony.
As for love, that was altogether another affair. What a strange people these English, thus to put the reaping before the sowing! How can any woman tell whom she will love when it is time for her to marry?
But Froyla knew well enough that it was quite useless to argue with an obstinate and hot-headed man like Captain Peter. She must let him come to the sense and meaning of life gradually. He would remain in Gallicia, and in time doubtless would grow to think like a Christian.
But Peter had two fashions of going about an affair so simple. When possible he went straight ahead. If not – well, then he went round about till he could climb over or creep under. The main thing was to get there.
Now he trampled straight before him, for his heart was hot with this abomination, so calmly proposed to him by an innocent girl. He put it down, quite wrongly, to religion and promised a good round sum to the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts.
Froyla watched him as he strode away through the dusky forest glades in which the spring flowers were beginning to bloom faintly blue in the hollows and shady places, pale yellow in the open sandy glades. Oh yes, a man to warm any woman’s heart, and a man who, even if one were to marry would know how to guard his own.
And Froyla rose and followed far off, keeping her misguided Captain in sight, and smiling the demure interior smile of a woman who in the long run is sure of getting her own way.
So Peter, observed of many, strode up the village street of La Giralda. The masons had finished repairing the few damaged houses, but their piles of stone-flakes and snowy chippings still lay about. Peter ascended the steep street with great strides, saluting no one, but with a darkened brow going about his business. Not a ‘Buenos tarde’ was heard. They knew that till he had discharged his thought Peter had no time for salutations. Presently he would reappear smiling, his hands in his pockets, and ready for a chat with the world. But for the affairs of the Band they let him alone. It was safest so, they whispered. Captain Peter was not always good to approach when he had grave matters on his mind. He passed his own lodging, next door to the house of Severino Cardoños; up and up he climbed till he found himself in the Feliçé quarter, and there (marvel of marvels!) he entered the house of Juan Julio – and shut the door after him.
Now except when it was a case of defending a house against an enemy, or a driving winter rain-storm from the Atlantic, one does not shut doors in Gallicia, nor indeed in anywhere in Spain out of Castille. All stands open and everyone enters as into a mill.
Peter found the old man, his head a little sunk on his breast among the silken waves of a white beard, which he combed incessantly till it had a lustre like floss-silk. The visitor did not beat about the bush.
‘Don Juan Julio,’ he said, ‘I have come to speak with you about Froyla.’
The veteran continued to caress his beard with the single hand which remained to him.
He fixed Peter with the brightness of his left eye, which still burned keen like a lantern in a ruined house after nightfall.
‘Early days, Señor Capitano,’ he murmured in a voice wholly without modulation, ‘to be speaking to me about Froyla Cardoños. But say on young man – say on!’
‘We love one another, Juan Julio, and I have come here to tell you.’
‘Well, well,’ said the old man, nodding his head tolerantly and paternally, as if he listened to the prattle of babes. ‘Well, well, I do not know that she could have chosen a better. They say you are a brave man, that you beat Molinos, who vaunted himself the best blade in all the Western Spains. You will make me respected, and my children shall be noble babes.’
‘But I will not have Froyla married to you, Don Juan Julio. I shall marry her myself.’
The old man’s hand stopped caressing his silken beard, and he fixed Peter with his solitary eye. Had he heard aright, or had the young man gone suddenly mad?
‘Eh!’ he said, ‘say that again!’
Peter repeated his objection to anybody but himself marrying Froyla, but the old man cut him short.
‘If she does not marry me she will have to marry Don Thomas Feliçé, who is a young man and will want a wife for himself.’
‘But that is just what I want – a wife for myself,’ cried Peter who was beginning to be seriously angry.
‘It is an unsettled time. I should think twice before encumbering yourself. You may change your flag again and then you leave hostages behind you. Besides, as like as not a wife would get you into trouble with Froyla; for she comes of a quick tempered race, and our women have high sentiments about the loyalty of their lovers. Ah, she is well-bred Froyla – she has all the delicacies! I will wager she never sent you on this fool’s errand.’
‘Indeed no,’ Peter admitted.
‘Indeed she did not seem to understand.’
‘A good girl, Froyla Cardoños and deserves her luck. Listen, man, if there be any sense in a young man’s head. I shall not be here long. My old bones will hamper you not at all. These are my wants – a sop and my potions, a stout wench to rub my legs when the wind is in the east. For the rest, go your own way. And as soon as the spring grass is over me you can go before the priest, if the thought takes you – a little penance, a few aves to say, and you are married safe and sound – you have the girl and the lands too.’
Abruptly Peter abandoned argument and tried corruption. The moral principles of La Giralda were very firmly fixed.
‘What is the value of the Feliçé lands in question?’
‘Let me see – let me see; the vineyards are the best in the country and the charcoal woods, the high pastures, ten campos, besides the wheatfields by the river, thirty houses with barns and stables. By holy St. Vincent, it is an evil time to sell with bands and brigands and foreign armies. But never a maravedi less than fifty thousand duros would buy all that.
‘Very well,’ said Peter, reaching for his hat, ‘that makes ten thousand English guineas. I will go and get them. We shall bring back a notary with us, so have your papers ready.’
‘And you have all that money hidden away?’ exclaimed the patriarch, twisting his beard in his excitement. ‘You who came to the campo in the rags of an English uniform?’
Then a new thought struck him.
‘But why will you give all that money for what in a few years, most likely in a few months, you would have for nothing?’
But Peter was already striding down the valley in search of Froyla. He had no time to answer questions.
Already Peter and Froyla had been three days on the hills without venturing to descend towards the densely-wooded region between Nogales and Bembibre, where the treasure had been abandoned. The first day they had spent in manœvering for safety. Froyla, interested in the matter as an adventure, and happy, because she could be with Peter, captured and drove off to a secret campo a couple of her father’s best mules, with pack saddles and loading gear all complete. She was back before daybreak, and in the afternoon the two departed, ostensibly directing their march towards Campostella along the track by which General Frazer’s army had made its weary and useless march.
It was certain that they would be watched. Juan Julio was cunning and would send his young men to discover Peter’s hiding-place. The hillsides sown with gold had excited all the north, and many lives had been lost, either by the slipping of a foot on perilous crags, or by the long-range practice of the French voltigeurs, who from their posts on the opposite hill shot down the gold-seekers like crows.
But as soon as night fell, Peter and Froyla left the warm shelter of the hayshed where they had passed the afternoon, quite silent, listening to the mild tinkle-tankle of the cowbells in the pastures, the light air-born noises from the little village far beneath in its trough of restless leaves and running waters. The crickets had sung all day in the pastures. The torrents boiled and raced. The rays of sunshine in which the motes danced wheeled across the hay like the hands of a clock as the sun swung slowly westward.
At last they saw the last light go out in the village, and hand in hand they stole out, the grasshoppers still busy about them, and took their way down towards Froyla’s high campo. Through meadows where the cows still tinkled and scented the air with the sweetness of their breath, springing from boulder to boulder across torrents where the basalt rocks showed black in the midst of white tormented water, up, down, and across, till after a final wait of half an hour to make sure that all was silent and solitary, they reached the goal.
There were the mules at last, moving restlessly and pining for deliverance. Forward then; there before them were the wild peaks under the stars, and the last pasture of all from which the snows of the year had hardly had time to melt, yet through which the gentian and the dwarf foxglove of the Sierras were already pushing. Higher still the pass was wholly sterile, the rock scarps bare, denuded of vegetation, the precipices abrupt, and the single path narrow and dangerous. They were getting near the gorge of Escaldos where four men – three of whom were now dead – had hidden away the treasure of golden guineas abandoned by their general.
For Moore had been resolved that nothing should for a moment delay his getting to his ships.
‘But it is money!’ the officers who were ordered to lighten the retreat of the rearguard had objected, with inherent British awe for the stamped and milled image of their sovereign.
‘Money is it?’ exclaimed Moore. ‘Well, so is powder and shot. Over with it!’
But four men charged with the conduct of the operation saved the treasure chests, hid them in a cleft of the rock high up a side alley, and were back in time to be caught by a hailstorm of bullets from the sharpshooters of Lagrange’s brigade.
Only the ex-scoutmaster of dragoons remained, and he looked upon the abandoned guineas as his undeniable property. He had been ordered to throw them over a cliff. He had saved them at the risk of his own life and the cost of three other lives. He was besides no longer in the English service; and in any case it could be argued that so soon as the General had cast the treasure out of his baggage train it became anybody’s property, and in no wise that of any British Government.
Not that Peter troubled himself with scruples and fine distinctions. If he could get the money he would not argue about questions concerning the right of trover.
But when at last Peter and his lieutenant looked down upon the gorge of Escaldos it was a mere drove-road of hurrying regiments, artillery, all Soult’s baggage train, tumbling flamboyantly southward to support the King. Romana might go where he liked. The French were evacuating Gallicia. The northern ports were deserted by their garrisons, all because there was news of the arrival of one man on the Tagus – a certain Sir Arthur Wellesley, with some Indian reputation, but apparently quite unable with twenty thousand troops to oppose the pick of Napoleon’s marshals, trained by the greatest master of war the world ever saw, and experienced in every corner of Europe.
Nevertheless instinct warned Soult that the new man would bear watching, and so, leaving an indignant Ney to shift for himself, he poured his army southward to the relief of King Joseph upon the Tagus.
It was clearly impossible that so long as this tide lasted there could be any safety in the gorge of Escaldos or its tributary defiles. Moreover, they must keep high up, for hard on the heels of the troops, gleaning the spare plunder and slaying all the stragglers, would come the hateful partidas.
So higher and higher among the pines mounted Peter and Froyla with their borrowed mules till they found a camp in a dell where a charcoal-burner had been at work. There they installed their beasts in a cavern still half-filled with charcoal, while they made themselves as comfortable as possible in the hut among the tall trees under the crest of the Sierras, high above everything except the jagged peaks themselves.
As philosophically as possible Peter settled down to wait. He would teach his lieutenant English. He would correct his own Spanish, which, though fluent, bore traces of the tobacco girl of the Havana. But all such projects simmered down into day-long talks, interrupted only by scrappy meals. Peter, with his arms clasped behind his neck, spoke of India and Tippoo Sahib, of the storming of Seringapatam, also of the treasure of the Rajah of Travancore.
Then all suddenly he sprang to his feet, ran to the door, looked about him carefully as if spying certain marks. Memory returned to Peter. He saw on the hillside a hundred yards above him a dark cave-mouth with above it a white stain.
‘Bide where you are Froyla,’ he commanded her. ‘I will bring you an ‘arles’ of the treasure now.’
She watched him climb the rugged side of El Pico with the long, slow strides of a mountaineer. He disappeared, and though she looked eagerly into the noon brilliance, her hand above her brow, she saw nothing except peewits swooping and the long planning flight of the curlews declining towards their nests.
‘Oorli–ooo-ooo–Oourli–oo!’
Presently he was back with something that showed bright in his hand – a long chain, which he threw about her neck, and a gold watch, which he slipped into the sautoir she wore crossed upon her breast, in white leather, burnished, the Imperial eagle upon the shoulder straps, the spoil of some young officer who had dressed himself for the Spanish Sierras as if for an afternoon’s promenade in the Rue de Rivoli. Peter, wholly without pride, but content to prove himself not nameless, showed the inscription inside. She could read his name, and the reason for the gift, ‘for exceptional valour,’ was also plain.
Froyla threw her arms about his neck.
They were true then, all the tales to which she had been listening. They were not mere bubbles of words blown to amuse on a long afternoon.
‘I love you, do you know, Don Peter?’
‘I know,’ said Peter, not at all surprised; ‘but why particularly now?’
‘Because it is all true.’
‘And you thought it was not?’
‘I thought it kind of you to amuse me -’
‘Oh,’ said Peter, ‘if I had taken the trouble to lie I could have told you some really remarkable things. But between you and me, the truth will serve our turn.’
They went back to the hut, and she sat down beside him, her cheek pressed closely against his.
‘Will it ever go – this watch? Will it tell the time?’
‘As soon as I get a key in any town – a few pennies buy one.’
Froyla clapped her hands.
‘Then I shall be able to tell the time.’
‘But you have only to look at the sun.’
‘I know – but at night.’
‘The stars.’
‘Then what is the good of a watch?’ demanded Froyla, impatiently tapping her foot on the floor of split pine saplings.
‘Not much,’ owned Peter, ‘but it is pretty, and – wait a moment – look at the hour the hands are marking – five hours less a quarter.’
‘Pray heaven the thing is working,’ he thought as he pulled the lever. ‘Listen!’ he exclaimed when he caught the preliminary click and purr of the escapement.
‘It will speak for itself. Four strokes slow and mellow – four o’clock – ting-ting-tang thrice repeated - three-quarters – then one small ping, very distant and clear, makes one minute more. So you can always tell the time in the darkest room in the blackest night.’
‘Oh!’ cried Froyla, ‘I shall always sleep with my shutters closed on purpose.’
That night Peter, who soldier-like slept in a shed outside on a bed of heather and romarin, awoke to a warm rain of tears and the sound of sobbing. He sat up in a moment.
‘What is the matter?’ Why have you left your bed in the hut? Why are you dressed at this hour?’
‘I am so happy – I could not sleep.’
‘Good luck! But why?’ said Peter. ‘Happiness never keeps me awake. But why cry?’
‘Because you are such a true man and I love you.’
‘Well,’ sighed Peter, kissing her gently, ‘that is the treasure. The other doesn’t matter three pins.’
‘Oh but it does!’ cried the true daughter of the house of Cardoños. ‘I want that too.’
About the Author
S. R. Crockett was born in Balmaghie, Galloway, in 1859 and died in France on April 16th, 1914. During his life, he had over 60 novels published (many of them serialised) and hundreds of short stories/sketches appeared in the popular magazines. He was one of Scotland’s bestselling and best known authors in his day, but now is barely known of. To commemorate the 100th anniversary of his death, The Galloway Raiders has been set up and a major collection of 32 of his Galloway-based fictional works has been republished by Ayton Publishing Limited.
To find out more about S. R. Crockett, you can join The Galloway Raiders for FREE at www.gallowayraiders.co.uk
To find out more about S. R. Crockett, you can join The Galloway Raiders for FREE at www.gallowayraiders.co.uk