The lady assented with a gesture, for she was too
exhausted to speak, and as they reached the French
sentries she tottered and sank down on the ground
insensible.
Madrid.
The French sentries, who had been watching with surprise
the slow approach of two peasant boys, the one carrying
a child, the other assisting a woman clad in handsome,
but torn and disheveled clothes, on seeing the latter
fall, called to their comrades, and a sergeant and
some soldiers came out from a guard-room close by.
“Hallo!” said the sergeant. “What’s
all this? Who is this woman? And where do
you come from?”
The boys shook their heads.
“Of course,” the sergeant said, lifting
the lady, “they don’t understand French;
how should they? She looks a lady, poor thing.
Who can she be, I wonder?”
“General Reynier,” Tom said, touching
her.
“General Reynier!” exclaimed the sergeant
to his comrades. “It must be the general’s
wife. I heard she was among those killed or carried
off from that convoy that came through last night.
Jacques, fetch out Captain Thibault, and you, Noel,
run for Dr. Pasques.”
The officer on guard came out, and, upon hearing the
sergeant’s report, had Madame Reynier at once
carried into a house hard by, and sent a message to
the colonel of the regiment. The little girl,
still asleep, was also carried in and laid down, and
the regimental doctor and the colonel soon arrived.
The former went into the house, the latter endeavored
in vain to question the boys in French. Finding
it useless, he walked up and down impatiently until
a message came down from the doctor that the lady
had recovered from her fainting fit, and wished to
see him at once.
Tom and Peter, finding that no one paid any attention
to them, sat, quietly down by the guard-house.
In a few minutes the French colonel came down.
“Where are those boys?” he exclaimed hastily.
There was quite a crowd of soldiers round the house,
for the news of the return of General Reynier’s
wife and child had circulated rapidly and created
quite an excitement. “Where are those boys?”
he shouted again.
The sergeant of the guard came forward.
“I had no orders to keep them prisoners, sir,”
he said in an apologetic tone, for he had not noticed
the boys, and thought that he was going to get into
a scrape for not detaining them; but he was interrupted
by one of the soldiers who had heard the question,
bringing them forward.
To the astonishment of the soldiers, the colonel rushed
forward, and, with a Frenchman’s enthusiasm,
actually kissed them. “Mes braves garcons!”
he exclaimed. “Mes braves garcons!
Look you, all of you,” he exclaimed to the soldiers,
“you see these boys, they are heroes, they have
saved, at the risk of their own lives, mark you, General
Reynier’s wife and daughter; they have braved
the fury of that accursed Nunez and his band, and
have brought them out from that den of wolves.”
And then, in excited tones, he described the scene
as he had heard it from Madame Reynier.
