zard galloping over his face, wiping
his eyes with its long cold tail.

All are unheeded, until the warning voice of the brazen instrument
sounds to arms. Strange it is, that the ear which is impervious to
what would disturb the rest of the world besides, should alone be
alive to one, and that, too, a sound which is likely to sooth the
sleep of the citizens, or at most, to set them dreaming of their
loves. But so it is: the first note of the melodious bugle places the
soldier on his legs, like lightning; when, muttering a few curses at
the unseasonableness of the hour, he plants himself on his alarm post,
without knowing or caring about the cause.

Such is a bivouac; and our sleep-breaker having just sounded, the
reader will find what occurred, by reading on.

March 12th.--We stood to our arms before daylight. Finding that the
enemy had quitted the position in our front, we proceeded to follow
them; and had not gone far before we heard the usual morning's
salutation, of a couple of shots, between their rear and our advanced
guard. On driving in their outposts, we found their whole army drawn
out on the plain, near Redinha, and instantly quarrelled with them on
a large scale.

As every body has read Waverley and the Scottish Chiefs, and knows
that one battle is just like another, inasmuch as they always conclude
by one or both sides running away; and as it is nothing to me what
this or t'other regiment did, nor do I care three buttons what this or
t'other person thinks he did, I shall limit all my descriptions to
such events as immediately concerned the important personage most
interested in this history.

Be it known then, that I was one of a crowd of skirmishers who were
enabling the French ones to carry the news of their own defeat through
a thick wood, at an infantry canter, when I found myself all at once
within a few yards of one of their regiments in line, which opened
such a fire, that had I not, rifleman like, taken instant advantage of
the cover of a good fir tree, my name would have unquestionably been
transmitted to posterity by that night's gazette. And, however
opposed it may be to the usual system of drill, I will maintain, from
that day's experience, that the cleverest method of teaching a recruit
to stand at attention, is to place him behind a tree and fire balls at
him; as, had our late worthy disciplinarian, Sir David Dundas,
himself, been looking on, I think that even _he_ must have admitted
th