"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.