hen he was to report his arrival, wait
until he received orders, and check the advance of any French force
endeavouring to move round the left flank of the British. The
evening before, one signal fire had announced that Wilson was on
the move and, thinking that he, too, might be summoned, Terence had
called in all his outposts, and was able to march a quarter of an
hour after he received the order.

He had learned, on the evening he returned from his visit to Sir
Robert, from men sent down into the plain for the purpose, that
Cuesta's army and that of Sir Arthur had advanced together from
Oropesa. He was glad at the order to join the army, as he had felt
that, should Soult advance, his force, unprovided as it was with
guns, would be able to offer but a very temporary resistance;
especially if the French Marshal was at the head of a force
anything like as strong as was reported by the peasantry. As to
this, however, he had very strong doubts, having come to distrust
thoroughly every report given by the Spaniards. He knew that they
were as ready, under the influence of fear, to exaggerate the force
of an enemy as they were, at other times, to magnify their own
numbers. Sir Arthur must, he thought, be far better informed than
he himself could be; for his men, being Portuguese, were viewed
with doubt and suspicion by the Spanish peasantry, who would
probably take a pleasure in misleading them altogether.

The short stay in the mountains had braced up the men and, with
only a short halt, they made a forty-mile march to the Alberche by
midnight. Scarcely had they lit their fires, when an Hussar officer
and some troopers rode up. They halted a hundred yards away, and
the officer shouted in English:

"What corps is this?"

Terence at once left the fire, and advanced towards them.

"Two Portuguese battalions," he answered, "under myself, Colonel
O'Connor."

The officer at once rode forward.

"I was not quite sure," he said, as he came close, "that my
question would not be answered by a volley. By the direction from
which I saw you coming, I thought that you must be friends. Still,
you might have been an advanced party of a force that had come down
through the defiles. However, as soon as I saw you light your
fires, I made sure it was all right; for the Frenchmen would not
likely have ventured to do so unless, indeed, they were altogether
ignorant of our advance."

"At ten o'clock this morning I received orders from h