The Sergeant-Majors wife, a fine, fat, well-looking woman, amongst many others, was taken ill, and visited with a bad fever. She was the sister of my man, Dan Carsons, and had kept close with the regiment from the time of its first landing in the Peninsula to the time I am now speaking of. She acted in many a useful capacity towards the officers. She supplied us with wine and bread, and every other comfort she could afford us, and was, in fact, a necessary appendage to the officers, for she was one of the best foragers I ever saw in the 88th regiment; and the army knows—the Peninsular army, I mean—that we had some good ones. But this poor woman lost two fine mules during our retrograde movement, as also the cargoes with which they were laden, amounting to a good round sum, which, at the lowest estimate, I must value to be worth three hundred dollars. This loss affected her. She had left no stone unturned to realise it, and this untoward event brought on a violent fit of illness. The fatigue she had undergone, no doubt, aided the cause of her disorder; but, be this as it may, she became quite delirious. While in her bed she could not be made to understand that the army was not in full retreat. “Where,” she would exclaim, “are my mules?” My man, Dan, was in constant attendance upon his sister, and was, as a matter of course, continually intoxicated! If she got better, he would say that he took a little dhrop “more than usual” for joy; if she relapsed, he did the same “to dhrown grief.” So that, between Dan’s “joy” and Dan’s “grief,” to say nothing of my own helpless state, I was anything but well off. At length the poor woman became quite insane, but she still looked up to Dan as her sheet-anchor; nevertheless, Dan always paid her that respect which he conceived due to the wife of the Sergeant-Major, and always called her Misthress O‘Neil; she, on the contrary, forgetting the station she held, always called her brother “Dan.” “Och, then,” said she, “Dan, what do the Frinch mane at all—where do they mane to dhrive us to?—an’t my mules gone, and our baggage gone, and still we’re on the rethrate? Haven’t they taken all from us, even our necessaries?—where do they mane to send us to?”—“By gob! Misthress O‘Neil,” replied Dan, with a broad grin, “I think they mane to _send us all to pot_!” CHAPTER XXV End of the Burgos retreat—Cantonments in Portugal—Rest at last—Shocking effects of excess in eating—The neighbourhood of Moimento de Beira—Wolves—The author employed to cater for his regiment on St. Patrick’s day—Is attacked by wolves on his return—Measure for measure. Dan Carsons' prognostication, which closed the last chapter, was not fulfilled, although a retreat on Portugal was necessary.