“Well, your honour, if you have got to fight, it would be best to do so on a good road.  Our horses would be of no use to us, if we were going single file along a bad road; while on a good road we could charge the spalpeens, and cut our way through.”

“You are quite right, Mike, and we will take the main road.  They will not be mounted, and I don’t think they would stand before a charge of seven men; but they may shoot some of us as we come down upon them.

“See here, Mike, this is my report that I wrote out yesterday evening;” and he took a packet from the inside of his coat.  “When we start tomorrow morning I shall put it in my left holster.  If I am shot, you will not wait for a moment, but will snatch it out and ride on to Madrid, and deliver it to the duke there.  I have, this morning, added a few lines relating the murder of Colonel Mendez, the hurried trial and execution of the storekeepers, and the attempts upon my life, and said I have not the least doubt that the governor is at the bottom of it all.”

“If your honour is killed, I will carry out your orders, but if it is only wounded you are, I will try to take you off with me.”

“You must do as I order you.”

“I obey your honour’s orders when they are reasonable,” Mike said doggedly; “but leave you behind, to have your throat cut by those villains!  I would not do such a thing, so there is an end of it.”

Desmond smiled at the earnestness of his faithful follower.

“Well, Mike, you must be guided by circumstances; but remember, it is of extreme importance that this report should reach the Duke of Orleans.  Unless he has it we may lose Badajos, and the cause suffer irreparable injury.”

“To the devil wid the cause,” Mike said.  “The cause doesn’t trouble me one way or the other.  I don’t care a brass farthing whether Philip or Charles reigns over the Spaniards.  It is not a nice job they will be taking on, any way, and not worth a drop of Irish blood.  Well, if your honour should have the bad fortune to be hit, I shall either carry you off, though there’s not a breath in your body, or else go down with you.”

As there was no doubt that Mike meant what he said, Desmond did not press the matter further.

The next day they set out at daybreak, and, in two hours, were mounting the slope of the sierra.  There were no signs of any men being about, until they reached a point where the road ran between steep hills.

“There they are,” Desmond exclaimed, reining in his horse.  “There are some thirty or forty of them on the road.

“Now, my men, we will ride forward to those boulders you see, a hundred yards this side of them, and then we will dismount and give them a volley.  If you keep that up, it will soon be too hot for them to remain on the road; while we, sheltered behind the rocks, will be safe from their shot.  It is certain that your guns will carry farther and shoot straighter than theirs, as the Spanish powder is so much inferior to the French.”