However willing I now am--and who is not--to recognize the genius and
foresight of that great man who then held the destinies of the Peninsula
within his hands, I confess at the time I speak of I could ill comprehend
and still less feel contented with the successive retreats our forces made;
and while the words Torres Vedras brought nothing to my mind but the last
resting-place before embarkation, the sad fortunes of Corunna were now
before me, and it was with a gloomy and desponding spirit I followed the
routine of my daily duty.

During these weary months, if my life was devoid of stirring interest or
adventure, it was not profitless. Constantly employed at the outposts,
I became thoroughly inured to all the roughing of a soldier's life, and
learned in the best of schools that tacit obedience which alone can form
the subordinate or ultimately fit its possessor for command himself.

Humble and unobtrusive as such a career must ever be, it was not without
its occasional rewards. From General Crawfurd I more than once obtained
most kind mention in his despatches, and felt that I was not unknown or
unnoticed by Sir Arthur Wellesley himself. At that time these testimonies,
slight and passing as they were, contributed to the pride and glory of my
existence; and even now--shall I confess it?--when some gray hairs are
mingling with the brown, and when my old dragoon swagger is taming down
into a kind of half-pay shamble, I feel my heart warm at the recollection
of them.

Be it so; I care not who smiles at the avowal. I know of little better
worth remembering as we grow old than what pleased us while we were young.
With the memory of the kind words once spoken come back the still kinder
looks of those who spoke them, and better than all, that early feeling of
budding manhood, when there was neither fear nor distrust. Alas! these are
the things, and not weak eyes and tottering limbs, which form the burden of
old age. Oh, if we could only go on believing, go on trusting, go on hoping
to the last, who would shed tears for the bygone feats of his youthful
days, when the spirit that evoked them lived young and vivid as before?

But to my story. While Ciudad Rodrigo still held out against the besieging
French,--its battered walls and breached ramparts sadly foretelling the
fate inevitably impending,--we were ordered, together with the 16th Light
Dragoons, to proceed to Gallegos, to reinforce Crawfurd's division, then
forming a c