The officer explained, Dick expostulated, the Pompadour was sulky; but after fiery threats, mutual apologies and expressions of friendship for life were exchanged, and Dick dined that evening at the mess, of which he was made an honorary member; but the story "found vent," with a hundred absurd additions; and Dick was so quizzed about it by the small wits of his own corps, that he exchanged into Ours, and joined us about the time Corunna was fought. But before the battalion embarked, he fell into another scrape by inserting in the Edinburgh papers the following advertisement!-- "Vive l'amour! any fair dame of spirit, maid .... or widow, who would wish to see the world, and will join her fortunes with those of a gallant officer, about to embark for the seat of war--age 25, height five feet ten inches by one foot ten across the shoulders--good looking decidedly, may have her offers carefully considered, by forwarding her name and qualifications to the President of the Mess Committee." But for the hurry of embarkation, old Sir David Dundas, he of the "Eighteen Manoeuvres," who then ruled at the Horse Guards, would have made this piece of impertinence a dear joke to Dick Duff. The latter, at Torres Vedras was severely wounded in the left leg, and given over for a time to the care of a pretty patrona, who was so kind to him, and like Corporal Trim's Beguin, fomented the wounded part so tenderly, that Dick remained so long on crutches, we thought he would never get off them or be well; tell one night getting tipsy at the quarters of his friend Garriehorn of the Grenadiers, he walked home, he never knew how, _without them_; and as he had been heard singing his invariable and inevitable song, "Who knows but our girls, (We have known stranger things)," &c. in the Plaza of Torres Vedras, he was obliged to report himself "fit for duty" next day, despite the tears of his patrona. After serving at Busaco, Fuentes d'Onor, Badajoz, and Salamanca, his battalion, with Stirling's old Highland Brigade, endured all the horrors of the retreat from Burgos. At the siege of the latter, the task of storming the famous hornwork, which had a hard sloping scarp of twenty-five feet, and a counter-scarp of ten, was specially confided to the 42nd Highlanders, who assailed the bastion after darkness had set in, and rushed on with great gallantry. Dick Duff was the first man up on the first ladder; and his feather bonnet was literally blown off his head by a volley of balls; every man by his side was bayonetted; and as each poor fellow in his fall knocked down others, the loss was terrible!