In a corner of the coffee-house two persons were seated, both of remarkable appearance, although in very different styles. One was a young man of about six-and-twenty years, low in stature and slightly built; his features regular, without beard, and of an expression of countenance rather pleasing than otherwise. His dress was a short braided jacket, unbuttoned on account of the sultriness of the evening, and disclosing a shirt of fine texture, and a coloured silk handkerchief tied loosely about his throat, which was round and moulded as that of a woman. His cavalry overalls were strapped and topped with leather, and had rows of large bright buttons down the sides; double-rowelled spurs were fixed to his boots, and on a chair beside him lay a foraging-cap and a light sabre. Although his features were small and delicately chiselled, there was great daring and decision in the thin compressed lips, slightly expanded nostril, and keen grey eye; and when he smiled, which was but rarely, certain lines around his mouth gave a cruel, almost a savage expression to his otherwise agreeable physiognomy. A Navarrese by birth, and of a roving and adventurous disposition, this man, at the commencement of the civil war, had espoused the cause of Don Carlos; but a violent quarrel with a superior officer, punished, as he considered, with undue severity, soon induced him to transfer his services to the Christinos. He raised a free corps, composed of Carlist deserters, smugglers, and desperadoes of every description, and made war upon his former friends with unbounded vindictiveness and considerable success. At the period now referred to, he had already, by various well-planned and boldly-achieved expeditions, accomplished chiefly in the nighttime, gained a high reputation, and the _sobriquet_, by which he was generally known, of El Mochuelo, or the Night Owl.
The man seated opposite to the partisan just described, was of a totally different stamp. Several inches taller than his companion, broad-shouldered and powerful, he had the careless weatherbeaten look of an old campaigner, equally ready to do his devoir in the field, or to enjoy a temporary repose in snug quarters. A bushy beard covered the lower part of his face, which was further adorned with a purple scar reaching completely across one cheek, the result of a sabre cut of no very ancient date. He wore a dragoon's uniform: his right arm, which rested on the table before him, was large and brawny, apparently well fitted to wield the ponderous sword that hung from his hip; but his left had been severed between wrist and elbow, and in its stead an iron hook protruded from the empty coat-cuff. On his right shoulder a single epaulet, with long silver bullion, marked his rank as that of lieutenant of free corps.