I repeated it, and we both crept together in the dry bed of a stream, which made the demarcation of the armies.

It was wine he wanted, of which we had a good provision, and the English had quite run out.

He gave me the money, and I, as was the custom, left him my firelock in pledge, and set off for the canteen.

When I returned with a skin of wine, behold, it had pleased some uneasy devil of an English officer to withdraw the outposts! Here was a situation with a vengeance, and I looked for nothing but ridicule in the present and punishment in the future.

Doubtless our officers winked pretty hard at this interchange of courtesies, but doubtless it would be impossible to wink at so gross a fault, or rather so pitiable a misadventure as mine; and you are to conceive me wandering in the plains of Castile, benighted, charged with a wine-skin for which I had no use, and with no knowledge whatever of the whereabouts of my musket, beyond that it was somewhere in my Lord Wellington's army.