footed, grimy-visaged drummer-boy, who, having been temporarily
promoted to the office of cook, hung with watering lips, and eyes
blinking from the effect of the wood smoke, over the precious stew
entrusted to his care. This he occasionally stirred with a drumstick,
the end of which he immediately afterwards transferred to his mouth,
provoking a catalogue of grimaces that the heat of the boiling mess and
its savoury flavour had probably an equal share in producing. Another
juvenile performer on the sheepskin was squatted upon his haunches on
the opposite side of the fire, acting as a check upon any excess of
voracity on the part of his comrade, whilst he diligently employed his
dirty digits and a rusty knife in peeling and slicing a large pumpkin,
of which the fragments, so soon as they were in a fitting state, were
plunged into the pot. A quantity of onion skins and tomata stalks, some
rusty bacon rind, the skin of a lean rabbit, and some feathers that
might have belonged either to a crow or a chicken, bestrewed the ground,
affording intelligible hints as to a few of the heterogeneous materials
already committed to the huge bowels of the kettle.

At a short distance from the fire, and so placed as to be out of the
current of smoke, a score of soldiers sprawled upon the grass, intent
upon the proceedings of a person who sat in the centre of the circle
they formed. This was a man whose complexion, dark as that of a Moor,
caused even the sunburnt countenance of his neighbours to appear fair by
the comparison. His eyes were deep-set and of a dead coal-black; and
around them, as well as at the corners of his large mouth, which, at
times, displayed a double row of sharp teeth of ivory whiteness, were
certain lines and wrinkles that gave to his physiognomy an expression in
the highest degree repulsive. Deceit, low cunning, and greed of gain,
were legibly written upon this unprepossessing countenance; whose wild
character was completed by a profusion of coarse dark hair, that hung or
rather stuck out in black elf-locks around the receding forehead and
tawny sunken cheeks. The dress of this man was in unison with his
aspect. He wore a greasy velveteen jacket, loose trousers of the same
stuff, and his feet were shod with _abarcas_--a kind of sandal in common
use in some parts of Navarre and Biscay, composed of a flat piece of
tanned pig's hide, secured across the instep by thongs. A leathern
wallet lay upon the ground beside him,