"The first--old, stupid, half-blind, and obstinate--swore to my face that I was the officer who had ordered his dear brother Vincentio, the abogado, to be shot on his own threshold, and another man to be bayoneted. In vain I drew his attention to the Highland cap of the 71st, and to my tartan trews, assuring him that I was an Escoto. He shook his head--I wore a red coat--I was the very man!
"Then came the muleteer, a sturdy Catalonian, clad in a fur jacket and yellow cotton breeches, wearing a broad sombrero, under which his black hair hung in a red net. He, too, swore across his knife, that I had carried off his train of mules, or at least, that at the bayonet's point, my soldiers had done so, to travel more at their ease.
"'He did not see me, neither did he then see any waggons of sick, but he knew his mules as well as if he had been the father of them, the moment they appeared in the streets of la Ciudad Real.'
"'By the marks in their ears, Don José, as readily as I would swear to my own nose.'
"'Lead forward some of those mules to the window, and let the witness see them.'
"An uproar of voices was heard in the park, and the witness, who went to the window, uttered a cry of dismay. The ears of his twenty mules had been shred off close by the bone!
"'Morte de Dios!' growled the officers, twirling their mustaches; 'these Inglesos are devils!'
"'It was murtherin cruel for the poor bastes,' whispered Darby Crogan; 'but it was all to save your honour's life I cropped them; and sure it is worth a bushel of mules' ears; for it was a good bushel ov 'em I buried this blessed morning. The Lord reward Misther Quill, for it was his best docthor's knife he lint me, to make croppies of them all.'
"The little Major Don José was bursting with wrath.
"'Call the next witness,' he exclaimed, furiously.
"A tall, powerfully-formed, and fair-complexioned man, who, contrary to the Spanish custom, was closely shaven, now came forward, and stated himself to be a farmer, or jardinero, at Mora and La Guardia. He had a large patch on his cheek, and kept one hand constantly thrust into the red and yellow sash which girt his waist.
"Confronting me boldly and vindictively, with all the glare of hate a cold grey eye can pour, he accused me of destroying for firewood a statue of the Virgin at Mora, and swore to having seen the act committed. A growl of anger followed his evidence; and I found that shooting an alcalde's brother, and carrying off twenty mules, were mere jokes, compared to this. I was startled by his voice, which, assuredly, I had heard before--but where? What could be the origin of a charge so false, so strange, as sacrilege? I turned to question him, but he was at that moment ordered to withdraw.