s' or goat-herds'--where as soon as the people understand that
we are not French they might give me some black-bread and an onion or
two."

The young soldier laughed a soft, low, mocking kind of laugh.

"Black-bread and an onion! How queer it seems! Why, there was a time
when I wouldn't have touched such stuff, while now it sounds like a
feast. But let's see; let's think about what I have got to do. As soon
as it's daylight I must find a cottage and try to make the people
understand what's the matter, and get them to help me to carry poor
Punch into shelter. Another night like this would kill him. I don't
know, though. I always used to think that lying down in one's wet
clothes, and perhaps rain coming in the night, would give me a cold; but
it doesn't. I must get him into shelter, though, somehow. Oh, if
morning would only come! The black darkness makes one feel so horribly
lonely.--What nonsense! I have got poor Punch here. But he has the
best of it; he can sleep, and here I haven't even closed my eyes. Being
hungry, I suppose.--I wonder where our lads are. Gone right off
perhaps. I hope we haven't lost many. But the firing was very sharp,
and I suppose the French have kept up the pursuit, and they are all
miles and miles away."

At that moment there was a sharp flash with the report of a musket, and
its echoes seemed to be thrown back from the steep slope across the
torrent, while almost simultaneously, as Gray raised himself upon his
elbow, there was another report, and another, and another, followed by
more, some of which seemed distant and the others close at hand; while,
as the echoes zigzagged across the valley, and the lad stretched out his
hand to draw himself up into a sitting position, oddly enough that hand
touched something icy, and he snatched it back with a feeling of
annoyance, for he realised that it was only the icy metal that formed
his wounded companion's bugle, and he lay listening to the faint notes
of another instrument calling upon the men to assemble.

"Why, it's a night attack," thought Pen excitedly, and unconsciously he
began to breathe hard as he listened intently, while he fully grasped
the fact that there were men of the French brigade dotted about in all
directions.

"And there was I thinking that we were quite alone!" he said to himself.

Then by degrees his short experience of a few months of the British
occupation on the borders of Portugal and Spain taught him t