Yet his cheek flushed with pride as he thought of the defiant answer his countrymen had returned to the summons of the British general. On what grounded they their confidence? Surely the Corrales de la Miserere had taught them plain enough that their troops could not meet those of England on equal terms! Then Evaña thought of his own plan of defence. "If they have adopted it only in part," said he to himself, "the plan of attack devised by this General Whitelock will give them every possible advantage." "Oh! that it were not for Spain, and that I were with you! Oh! my people," he exclaimed aloud. His own voice startled him. He looked round hurriedly; no one was near. He resumed his monotonous walk up and down, and now his thoughts went back to the council upon which he had intruded in the afternoon, and he pondered upon the talk he had had with General Whitelock and the others. "Such manifest folly," said he to himself. "They all saw it except that fool of an aide-de-camp. There are good soldiers among them, how is it that the one who knows least commands them all? Have I been mistaken in the English? Would their alliance be of no service to us? No, I have seen them in their own country. The English are a great people, but there are many fools among them." CHAPTER XI THE PATHWAYS OF DEATH The Corrales de la Miserere stood in a hollow. On the higher ground behind this hollow stood Mr White's house and some other quintas; to the east of the hollow the ground rose gradually for more than half-a-mile till it reached the level of the centre of the city, which extended to within half-a-mile of the eastern face of the city, when the ground again sloped gently down to the beach. Thus from the Corrales de la Miserere nothing whatever could be seen of the city, save the houses immediately bordering on the Plaza, and the orchards and aloe fences of the suburbs which stretched to the right and left of the position held by the British army. Even from Mr White's house, which overlooked the suburbs and the nearer quarters of the city, very little could be seen of it without ascending to the roof, from which the towers and domes of the churches were plainly visible, but the city itself appeared only as a wilderness of houses, the lines of the streets being undistinguishable. The city of Buenos Aires at that time was in the shape of a triangle, of which the river front of the city, about three miles long, formed the base, the apex being at the Plaza Miserere. On the two sides of this triangle clustered the suburbs, cut up at regular distances into blocks by roads which were the continuations of the streets of the city. The city with its suburbs formed thus an irregular parallelgram, but in the suburbs, in addition to the streets, there were many bye-roads, in which a stranger might easily go astray.