D'Artagnan, the King Maker — page 239: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

224 A Talk Over Sword Blades. “That I should meet the very person in all Portugal for whom I bear a kind of letter of introduction.” “A recommendatory letter to me?” cried the count, sharing Porthos’ amaze. “Would you have expected the like, Porthos?” “Never,” said the one appealed to, not knowing which ear to listen with. “‘What the deuce and all is this fertile Gascon going to invent next?” “You see here,” continued the musketeer, bowing to his companion, “a gentleman of arms like myself, of France—he of the North, I of Gascony—officer of for- tune, I! He, man of fortune! weary of the long peace promised between France and your country, our brows are wrinkled like an old boot! so are our purses, at least, mine, wrinkled with emptiness. We come to offer our swords to Spain to quell this little rising on her frontier.” “Faith of the knight, if your friend’s sword is of the same metal as yours, sir, the king himself might accept them both without any other recommendation than mine.” This new turn to the dialogue so interested him that he forgot his wound, beginning to sting. “We came with nothing but our swords, to Bilbao, wishing we had at least a line to pass us on to Madrid; when the road was infested with malefactors, who prided themselves on being disbanded soldiers, but whom I sus- pect to be of the Brigade of Waylayers and Regiment of Tainted Sheep. The company of them with whom we fell into contact were amusing themselves with stripping a Jew, previous to flaying him, I daresay. This was be- cause he had not rewarded them for stopping him, with more than a roll of writings and a bag hung around his neck. Now, at the last inn he stopped at, from the care he took of the bag, the landlord, in collusion with the highwaymen, had judged it was full of gems. So he informed his friends, ‘the Moonshiny Knights.’ But as we arrived, they had discovered that the sack contained merely earth.” | “Earth?” repeated Porthos as well as the colonel, to both of whom this story was new. “Dust, absolutely worthless—ask Porthos.” Eomichooksco