"I was intending to send my despatches on to Sir John Cradock, and wait here for orders."

"I think that you had better take your despatches on yourself, Mr. O' Connor. I do not suppose that they are anything like so full as the story you have told us, which, I am sure, would be of as much interest to the general as it has been to us."

"I will do so, sir, and will start this evening. My horse had three days' rest at Villa Nova, and is quite fit to travel."

"You must be feeling terribly anxious about your cousin," the officer who had first told him about her remarked; "there is no saying what may have happened in Oporto after it was stormed."

"I should indeed be, if she were there," Terence replied; "but I am happy to say that she is at present in Coimbra, having travelled with us under the charge of some Portuguese ladies, friends of Herrara."

"You don't mean to say that you persuaded the bishop to let her out of the convent?"

"Scarcely," Terence laughed, "though the bishop did unwittingly aid me."