, and they were a second time
surrounded. In the mean while, the main body of the Spanish cavalry were
flying in all directions, and Riego's deep voice was heard at intervals,
through the columns of smoke and dust, calling and exhorting them in
vain. D'Aguilar and his scanty troop, after a desperate skirmish, broke
again through the enemy's line drawn up against their retreat. The rank
closed after them like waters when the object that pierced them has
sunk: Falkland and his two companions were again environed: he saw his
comrades cut to the earth before him. He pulled up his horse for one
moment, clove down with one desperate blow the dragoon with whom he was
engaged, and then setting his spurs to the very rowels into his horse,
dashed at once through the circle of his foes. His remarkable presence
of mind, and the strength and sagacity of his horse, befriended him.
Three sabres flashed before him, and glanced harmless from his raised
sword, like lightning on the water. The circle was passed! As he
galloped towards Riego, his horse started from a dead body that lay
across his path. He reined up for one instant, for the countenance,
which looked upwards, struck him as familiar. What was his horror,
when in that livid and distorted face he recognised his uncle! The thin
grizzled hairs were besprent with gore and brains, and the blood yet
oozed from the spot where the ball had passed through his temple.
Falkland had but a brief interval for grief; the pursuers were close
behind: he heard the snort of the foremost horse before he again put
spurs into his own. Riego was holding a hasty consultation with his
principal officers. As Falkland rode breathless up to them, they had
decided on the conduct expedient to adopt. They led the remaining square
of infantry towards the chain of mountains against which the village,
as it were, leaned; and there the men dispersed in all directions. "For
us," said Riego to the followers on horseback who gathered around him,
"for us the mountains still promise a shelter. We must ride, gentlemen,
for our lives--Spain will want them yet."

Wearied and exhausted as they were, that small and devoted troop fled on
into the recesses of the mountains for the remainder of that day--twenty
men out of the two thousand who had halted at Lodar. As the evening
stole over them, they entered into a narrow defile: the tall hills rose
on every side, covered with the glory of the setting sun, as if Nature
rejoi