"It"s the Irishman!" cried Don Carlos--"it"s the Irish guerilla! It"s O"Toole! The villain! he shall hang for this!"
Harry was too good-natured to feel revengeful, and was just beginning to beg for O"Toole"s life, when suddenly there arose behind them the sound of hurried footsteps, followed by wild cries. All turned, and a strange figure met their eyes.
It was a woman. She wore a military cloak and an officer"s kepi. She looked wildly around.
"Where is he? Where is my own one?" she cried--""His Majesty?" Where is the hope of Spain?"
Russell saw her.
He threw out wide his manly arms--he opened his mouth: "Jew?li?a-r-r-r-r-r-r!"
With a long, loud cry he shouted this name, and rushed toward her.
Mrs. Russell saw him coming--her lost, lamented lord! the one whom she had mourned as dead! Was this his ghost? or was he indeed alive? In any case, the shock was awful for a woman of delicate nerves; and Mrs. Russell prided herself on being a woman of very delicate nerves.
So she did what a woman of delicate nerves ought to do--she gave a loud, long, piercing shriek, and fainted dead away in her fond husband"s arms.
Don Carlos gave a grin, and then pulled at his mustache.
"Another victim," said he to the laughing company. "Oh yes; O"Toole shall certainly swing for this. Discipline must and shall be maintained. Send out and catch the fellow. Have him up here at once."
They sent out and they hunted everywhere, but nowhere could they discover any traces of the brilliant, the festive, the imaginative, the mimetic, the ingenious O"Toole. He was never seen again.
Some say that in the dead of night two figures might have been seen slowly wending their way up the path toward the tower; that the one looked like O"Toole and the other looked like Rita. It may have been so; many things are possible in this evil world; and if so, we must suppose that these two gradually faded away among the mists of cloud-land that always surround a castle in Spain.
CHAPTER LXI.
IN WHICH THERE IS AN END OF MY STORY.
The ill.u.s.trious host received his guests with large and lavish hospitality. The best that could be afforded by a bounteous commissariat was placed before them. The table was laid, the banquet was spread, and all the company sat down together.
At the head of the table was Don Carlos.
On his right was Talbot, with Brooke beside her.
On his left was Katie, with Harry beside her.
Next to Harry was Dolores, with Ashby beside her.
Next to Brooke was a priest in somewhat martial attire, whom Don Carlos introduced to them as--The Cure of Santa Cruz!
He was a broad-shouldered, middle-aged man, with strongly marked features, eagle eye, and bold and resolute face. This was the very man whom Brooke had once personated; but Brooke was just now silent about that particular matter, nor did he care to mention to any of his Spanish friends the fact that he was an American, and a newspaper correspondent. In spite of the pa.s.sports and credentials with which his wallet was stuffed and with which his pockets bristled, he had not been recognized by any one present; a fact that seems to show that those papers had been obtained from some of the inferior officers of Don Carlos, or perhaps from some other correspondent who had fallen in the practice of his professional duties.
The Cure of Santa Cruz said grace, and the banquet began.
Don Carlos was a man of joyous soul and large, exuberant spirit, with a generous, romantic, and heroic nature. He also knew how to lay aside, on occasion, all the cares of his position; so now he was no longer the commander of a gallant army, the banner-bearer of a great cause, the claimant of a throne. On the contrary, he was the simple gentleman among other gentlemen--_primus inter pares_--the hospitable host, chiefly intent upon performing the pleasing duties of that office.
He had also showed such an amiable interest in the adventures of his guests that they had frankly told him all that was of any interest. Harry had a more confiding disposition than the others, and after the ladies had retired he disclosed more and more of their affairs, until at last their gallant host had obtained a very clear idea of the sentimental side of the story.
"Gentlemen," said Don Carlos at length, "to-morrow we shall resume our march, and I shall be happy to do for you all in my power. I shall be sorry to part with you, yet glad to restore you to your liberty. A company will take you to the nearest railway station, from which you can proceed to your respective destinations. But before you go allow me to offer you a suggestion which I am sure you will not take amiss.
"You, gentlemen, are looking forward to the time when these lovely and amiable ladies shall sustain the closest possible relation toward you. You will pardon me, I trust, if I hint just now that their position is a very embarra.s.sing one, travelling as they are without proper chaperonage. In Spanish eyes that is a calamity. Now, the suggestion that I was about to make is this, namely, that you should free these ladies from this embarra.s.sment by persuading them to accept you now as their legal protectors. Surely nothing can be more desirable on all sides. No place can be more fitting than this; no hour more convenient; no scene more romantic. As for the priest, here sits my reverend friend the Cure of Santa Cruz--a warrior-priest, an eccentric character, yet a brave and n.o.ble soul; and he, let me a.s.sure you, can tie the knot so tight that it could not be made tighter even by the Holy Father himself, a.s.sisted by the Patriarch of Constantinople and the Archbishop of Canterbury."
This suggestion came as sudden as thunder from a clear sky; yet after the first shock it was considered by all present, and especially by those most concerned, as--first, ingenious; then, happy; then, most excellent; and, finally, glorious. When this unparalleled and matchless royal speech was ended the whole company burst forth into rapturous applause.
Ashby and Harry, in wild excitement, forgot everything but their old friendship and their latest love. They grasped one another"s hands with all their olden fervor.
"Hurrah, old fellow!" cried Harry.
"Glorious! isn"t it, old boy?" cried Ashby.
"I"ll do it; won"t you?" cried Harry.
"I will, by Jove!" cried Ashby.
And thus that quarrel was settled.
Brooke said nothing, but his eyes grew moist in his deep joy, and he muttered and hummed all to himself the words of some strange old song which had no connection with anything at all. For this was his fashion, the odd old boy! whenever his feelings were deeply stirred, and he fell into that fashion now:
"I never knew real happiness Till I became a Methodess; So come, my love, and jine with me, For here"s a parson "ll marry we.
Come for"ad and jine, Come for"ad and jine, This night come for"ad and jine.
A-A-A-A-A-men!"
During the banquet and the subsequent proceedings the virtuous Russell had been silent and distrait. Though restored to the arms of the best of wives, still he was not happy. There was yet something wanting. And what was that? Need I say that it was the lost package with the precious bonds?
Ah no, for every one will surely divine the feelings and thoughts of this sorrowful man.
And he in his abstraction had been trying to think what could be done; for the bonds were lost to him: they were not in the place where he had concealed them. What that place really was he now knew only too well. Had that fiend Rita found them? Perhaps so--yet perhaps not. On the whole, as a last resort, he concluded that it would be best to appeal to Don Carlos.
His face indicated goodness, and his whole treatment of the party invited confidence; there surely he might meet with sympathy, and if the package had been found by any of the Carlists it might be restored.
And so, as the uproar subsided, Russell arose, and walking toward Don Carlos, suddenly, and to the amazement and amus.e.m.e.nt of all present, flung himself on his knees, crying,
"A boon! a boon, my liege!"
These preposterous words had lingered in his memory from some absurd reading of his boyhood.
Don Carlos smiled. "What does he say?" he asked.
Harry came forward to act as interpreter.
Russell now told all. Harry knew in part the fortunes of the bonds after they had left Russell"s hands; but then they had again been lost, so that he could not tell what had finally become of them. Of his own part in finding them, and then concealing them again, he thought best to say nothing.