Penny Blood Serial Fiction — page 230: what you’re looking at

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

THE SPANIARD 213 I was reminded that the hour had come when I was to learn the result of the negotiations in respect to the captive son of the military commandant of Catalonia. Those terms _ were favourable: a ransom money was paid for his release, and immunity was granted to myself and my band for the ensuing three months. But such a change had come over me that I resolved to abandon immediately the hfe I was leading. I thought to myself that if I were to follow you to England, whither [| felt assured you would repair, I might yet succeed in making an impression upon your heart. I thought that when you were free, and no longer regarded me in the light of a gaoler, you would forget whatsoever injustice you had sustained at my hands; while on the other hand, you would remember the many proofs of devoted love that I had given you. ‘““T took leave of my comrades, I abandoned to them the ereater share of the spoils which we had amassed, and they wept as they gave me the farewell embrace. I set out alone toward the Pyrenees, intending to follow you to England. But_I had not journeyed many miles, when I was seized with a sudden illness, brought on by the anguish I had suffered on account of your flight. It struck me like a thunderbolt. I fell from my horse, and lay senseless in the depth of a ravine. There I might have perished, had it not been for the kindness of some peasants who chanced to pass that way. They took me to their cottage in the neighbouring hamlet, and there I lay, raving in the delirium of fever for many weeks. When I regained complete consciousness, I was so enfeebled, so attenuated, that 1 could aot leave my couch, and thus some more weeks passed, while [ lay stretched prostrate and powerless there. One morning a party of soldiers entered the village, and their commanding officer billeted them upon the inhabitants. This officer was the captain-general’s son, whom I had taken prisoner, and whom you saw at the. tower. On going his rounds to see that his men were properly cared for, he came to the cottage where I lay. I was recog- nized. The three months of safety guaranteed by his father had more than elapsed, and I was accordingly arrested as a Carlist traitor and as a guerilla bandit. But the young man possessed certain generous feelings, and he did not send me out to be shot like a dog, as he might have done, and as most other of the Christina officers would have done in his Gomichoo cS (C(O)