most kind mention in his despatches, and felt that I was not unknown or
unnoticed by Sir Arthur Wellesley himself. At that time these testimonies,
slight and passing as they were, contributed to the pride and glory of my
existence; and even now--shall I confess it?--when some gray hairs are
mingling with the brown, and when my old dragoon swagger is taming down
into a kind of half-pay shamble, I feel my heart warm at the recollection
of them.

Be it so; I care not who smiles at the avowal. I know of little better
worth remembering as we grow old than what pleased us while we were young.
With the memory of the kind words once spoken come back the still kinder
looks of those who spoke them, and better than all, that early feeling of
budding manhood, when there was neither fear nor distrust. Alas! these are
the things, and not weak eyes and tottering limbs, which form the burden of
old age. Oh, if we could only go on believing, go on trusting, go on hoping
to the last, who would shed tears for the bygone feats of his youthful
days, when the spirit that evoked them lived young and vivid as before?

But to my story. While Ciudad Rodrigo still held out against the besieging
French,--its battered walls and breached ramparts sadly foretelling the
fate inevitably impending,--we were ordered, together with the 16th Light
Dragoons, to proceed to Gallegos, to reinforce Crawfurd's division, then
forming a corps of observation upon Massena's movements.

The position he occupied was a most commanding one,--the crown of a long
mountain ridge, studded with pine-copse and cork-trees, presenting every
facility for light-infantry movements; and here and there gently sloping
towards the plain, offering a field for cavalry manoeuvres. Beneath, in
the vast plain, were encamped the dark legions of France, their heavy
siege-artillery planted against the doomed fortress, while clouds of their