L'Isle, taking the dispatch handed to him, broke the seal and read it
deliberately, then said: "Does Sir Rowland think I keep an extra stud
of horses, to do the riding that properly belongs to his own staff?"

"Why, where is he sending you now?"

"To Badajoz, on an errand similar to that on which I went into
Andalusia."

"To Badajoz? That is no distance at all; at least nothing to grumble
at," said Lord Strathern. "You are growing lazy, L'Isle. Why Mabel
would ride that far after a rare flower. Just think you are chasing a
fox, who takes the high road, and never doubles once between this and
Badajoz."

"That would be a fox of a new breed," suggested L'Isle.

"I confess," said his lordship, "I never started one of the kind. But
Sir Rowland's staff have their hands full just now. To lighten their
labors, I have had to furnish more than one officer for special
duties. You surely would not have Sir Rowland send an aid all the way
from _Coria_, merely to see if those Spanish fellows in Badajoz are in
a state to march without disbanding, or without plundering the country
as they move through it!"

"Talking of marauding, my lord," said L'Isle; "I wish the taste for
that diversion was confined to our Spanish friends. It is becoming
every day more necessary to check the excesses of our own people. We
cannot send out a party into the country around, but on their return