You are both very young, and I should be sorry to see your lives sacrificed in such an enterprise as that I am undertaking, and shall think no less of you if you elect now to have a period of rest." The young men had, however, so firmly and emphatically declined to leave him that the earl had accepted their continued service.
The cavalry, instead of keeping in a compact body, were broken up into parties of ten, all of whom followed different roads, spreading, through every hamlet they passed, the news that a great army, of which they were the forerunners, was following hotly behind.

So that should any peasants favorable to Philip's cause carry the news to Las Torres, that general would be forced to believe that he was being pursued by a veritable army.

Many stragglers of the retreating force were picked up and handed over to the peasantry to be sent as prisoners into Catalonia.
For the most part the little parties of cavalry were well received by the populace; the majority of Valencians were in favor of King Charles, and that night, when they halted, the weary horses obtained ample supplies of grain and forage, and the troopers were made welcome to the best the villages afforded.
A few extra horses were purchased by Peterborough during the day, and it was well for his aides de camp that it was so, for scarcely had they finished their meal than Peterborough ordered them again into the saddle.

They were to ride by crossroads right and left to the villages where the different detachments had been ordered to halt, and to tell them the routes marked out for them by which they would again concentrate at midday, so as to ride in comparatively strong force through a small town on the main road, whence news might, not improbably, be sent on to Las Torres.

After that they were again to disperse and pervade the country.
Jack and Graham carried out these orders, taking guides from each village through which they passed to the next, and it was near midnight before they had finished their work.