and soundly cursed. The musketry crackled on without
intermission. Away in Ciudad Rodrigo the walls seemed to open and
vomit fireworks, shell after shell curving up and dropping into the
valley.

"Glory be!" cried someone. "The old man's done it! The Johnnies
wouldn't be shelling their own works."

"Ah, be quiet with ye!" answered an Irish voice; "and the fun not ten
minutes old!"

"He's done it, I say! Whist now, see yonder--there's Elder going
down with his Greasers! Heh? What did I tell you?"

"Silence in the ranks!" commanded an officer, but his own voice shook
with excitement, and we read that he believed the news to be true.

"Arrah now, sir," a man in the front rank wheedled softly, "it's
against flesh and blood you're ordering us."

"Wait a moment, then. They've done it, I believe--but no cheering,
mind!"

What had been done was this. From the summit of the hill where we
stood we looked into Ciudad Rodrigo over a lesser hill, and between
these two (called the Great and the Lesser Tesson) the French had
fortified and palisaded a convent and built a lunette before it,
protecting that side of the town where the ground was least rocky and
could be worked by the sappers. Upon the lunette before this Convent
of San Francisco, Colborne (our Colonel of the 52nd) had now flung
himself, with two companies from each of the Light Division
regiments, and carried it with a rush: and this feat, made possible
by our night march across the Agueda and the negligence of the
French sentries, in its turn gave the signal for the siege to open.
The place was scarcely carried before Elder had his Portuguese at
work spading a trench to the right of it and under what cover its
walls afforded from the artillery of the town, which ceased not all
night to pound away at the lost redoubt.

The cacadores--seven hundred in all--toiled with a will under shot
and shell; and when day broke a trench three feet deep and four wide
had been opened and pushed for no less than six hundred yards towards
the town! Next night the Portuguese were replaced by the First
Division, which had been marched over the Agueda. While the Light
Division cooked its food and enjoyed itself on Mount Tesson, the
others had to cross and recross the river between their work and
their quarters; and I fear that we took their misfortunes
philosophically, feeling that our luck was deserved. To be sure I
had been taken from my company and relegated to the b