In the mean time, the life of the camp was busy. The daily drill and exercise of two thousand men was not a slight affair, and the constant changes in orders which the arrival of bodies of recruits occasioned, rendered this primary duty more difficult; the office of quartermaster required the utmost resource and temper; the commissariat, which, from the nature of the country, could depend little upon forage, demanded extreme husbandry and forbearance. But, perhaps, no labors were more severe than those of the armorers, the clink of whose instruments resounded unceasingly in the valley. And yet such is the magic of method, when directed by a master-mind, that the whole went on with the regularity and precision of machinery. More than two thousand armed men, all of whom had been accustomed to an irregular, some to a lawless, life, were as docile as children; animated, in general, by what they deemed a sacred cause, and led by a chief whom they universally alike adored and feared.
Among these wild warriors, Theodora, delicate and fragile, but with a mien of majesty, moved, like the spirit of some other world, and was viewed by them with admiration not unmixed with awe. Veterans round the camp-fire, had told to the new recruits her deeds of prowess and devotion; how triumphantly she had charged at Voltorno, and how heroically she had borne their standard when they were betrayed at fatal Aspromonte.
The sun had sunk behind the mountains, but was still high in the western heaven, when a mounted lancer was observed descending a distant pass into the valley. The general and his staff had not long commenced their principal meal of the day, of which the disappearance of the sun behind the peak was the accustomed signal. This permitted them, without inconvenience, to take their simple repast in the open, but still warm, air. Theodora was seated between the general and her husband, and her eye was the first that caught the figure of the distant but descending stranger.
The general, immediately using his telescope, after a moment’s examination, said: “A lancer of the royal guard.”
All eyes were now fixed upon the movements of the horseman. He had descended the winding steep, and now was tracking the craggy path which led into the plain. As he reached the precinct of the camp, he was challenged, but not detained. Nearer and nearer he approached, and it was evident, from his uniform, that the conjecture of his character by the general was correct.