, wounded, and prisoners, the allies had
also suffered serious loss, and General Conyngham had received a mortal
wound. The command, therefore, had devolved upon himself.

Having seen the infantry march off, Peterborough, attended only by his
two aides de camp, took his place at the head of his handful of cavalry
and proceeded on his desperate enterprise--an enterprise the most
extraordinary that has ever taken place between enemies of an equal
degree of civilization. It was a war of a general with a small escort,
but literally without an army, against able officers with thousands of
disciplined troops and numerous defensible towns and positions, against
enormous difficulties of country, against want and fatigue in every
shape, and above all, against hope itself.

And yet no one who had witnessed that little body march off would
have supposed that they were entering upon what seemed an impossible
expedition--an expedition from which none could come back alive. Worn
out and sorry as was the appearance of the horses, ragged and dirty that
of their riders, the latter were in high spirits. The contagion of the
extraordinary energy and audacity of their chief had spread among them;
they had an absolute confidence in his genius, and they entered upon the
romantic enterprise with the ardor of schoolboys.

Not less was the spirit of the two young aides de camp. Before starting
the earl had offered them the option of marching away with the infantry.

"It is not that I doubt your courage, lads, for I marked you both under
fire at Montjuich, but the fatigues will be terrible. You have already
supported, in a manner which has surprised me, the work which you have
undergone. You have already borne far more than your full share of the
hardships of the campaign, and I have, in my dispatches, expressed a
very strong opinion to the government as to the value of the services
you have rendered. You are both very young, and I should be sorry to see
your lives sacrificed in such an enterprise as that I am undertaking,
and shall think no less of you if you elect now to have a period of
rest."

The young men had, however, so firmly and emphatically declined to leave
him that the earl had accepted their continued service.

The cavalry, instead of keeping in a compact body, were broken up into
parties of ten, all of whom followed different roads, spreading, through
every hamlet they passed, the news that a great army, of which they were
t