Penny Blood Serial Fiction — page 153: what you’re looking at

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

136 REYNOLDS’ WORKS at a short distance by one of the band, I might have suddenly darted off, but could I hope that my limbs would prove swifter than those of the alert and athletic Catalan bandit? And I was resolved not to suffer the mortification of making any ineffectual endeavour to emancipate myself. I must frankly confess that at last I got so accustomed to this strange mode of life that it became far less irksome to me than might have been supposed. Indeed, I had few induce- ments to make me wish to return to the great world again, — that world in which I had already experienced some misfortunes. But still I longed — oh, most fervently longed —to embrace my beloved brother, and I was also fearful that should the Christino soldiers ever take the tower by surprise, there might be a general fusilade of all its inmates, men and women without discrimination, and my unfortunate self amongst them. For I knew full well that the most atrocious barbarities were committed by the Spanish soldiers, no mercy even being shown to females or innocent children. That Don Diego Christoval himself full well sus- pected my hope and idea of escaping, there cannot be the slightest doubt, and hence the precautions which he took to anticipate any endeavour of that kind on my part. Never- theless, I was not made positively to feel that I was a prisoner; it was a sort of honourable captivity in which I was kept. For instance, the door of my chamber was never bolted outside at night, but then, although I was thus at liberty to quit my room if I chose, I could not have issued forth from the tower, as there were two sentinels ever posted at the entrance-door. “One day, after the return of the count and his band from a marauding expedition, they brought the intelligence, which they had gleaned at some distant village, that the captain-general of Catalonia had marched forth from Barce- lona at the head of a considerable body of troops, with the intention of scouring the Catalan Hills and annihilating the cuerilla and bandit hordes which infested those districts. It was likewise understood that the military commandant intended to divide his troops into five or six flying columns, with a view to carry on his operations in various parts oi the principality at the same time. It was therefore a serious danger which now appeared to be imminent. I sought an opportunity of speaking alone with Christoval, and repre- Gomichbooks (E(0)