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"I shall go alone, then?" said D'Artagnan. "I am sorry to say you must; but come back to dinner." "Pardieu! the eating at your house is too good to make me think of not coming back." And thereupon D'Artagnan quitted his host, bowed to the guests, and took his arquebuse; but instead of shooting, went straight to the little port of Vannes.

It was invented by a Piedmontese; but I have had the honor to perfect it. The first operation I performed was at the siege of Metz, on Monsieur de Pienne, whom I cured, who was afterwards all the more intelligent in consequence. His was an abscess caused by the blow of an arquebuse.

"Each horseman carries a footman armed with an arquebuse behind him, so that the troop is twice as numerous as it appears." "That's true; upon my soul, the child has good sight. Let someone go at once full gallop and take news of this to the Earl or Argyll." "I! I!" cried Little William. "I saw them first; it is my right to bear the tidings."

"Whence, then, did it come?" asked the duke. "No arquebuse has been found, and a careful scrutiny has been made." "Aye!" echoed the friars. "Whence else did it come? Whence, my Lord d'Hymbercourt, whence?" I had noticed our Irish servant Michael standing near one of the friars.

In another moment, however, Dollie forgot all her trouble as she caught sight of her father coming towards her, his arquebuse in his hand. 'You here, little one! he cried, and hastily drew the children with him into the gallery, behind the protecting walls of which the combatants found shelter from the enemy's fire.

If Your Majesty shall not take means for that end, I fear lest despair should teach the sufferers that a soldier is, after all, nothing more than a peasant bearing arms; and lest, when the vine-dresser shall have taken up his arquebuse, he should cease to become an anvil only that he may become a hammer."

With about a hundred horsemen he set off to cross the river by a ford which he knew of, and behind each horseman he had placed a foot-soldier, armed with an "arquebuse." Don Pedro did this in order to raise an alarm in the French camp, so that the whole army might rush to defend it, and leave unprotected the bridge, which would then be seized by the Spaniards.

For instance, the rifled arquebuse was known and used at the close of the fifteenth century, and, although the rifled musket was not put in general use by the French infantry, from the fact that its reduced length and the greater complication of movements required in loading and discharging it deprived it of other advantages when in the hands of troops of the line, still it was adopted in a certain proportion in some branches of the French service.

"I hope that I can do something now, sir," I said, not liking the thoughts of being shut up. "I can fire a pistol if I cannot point an arquebuse; and since morning I have carried a hundred baskets or more of earth to the embankment."

He gave him, as time went on, a holy horror of books and study; taught him the mechanical knowledge required by a military career, made him a good rider, a good shot with an arquebuse, and skilful with his dagger.