Now that the enemy's movements were unshackled, the cloud, which for months had been gathering over Portugal, began to burst--and, sharp as Crawfurd and his division looked before, it now behoved them to look somewhat sharper. Had he acted in conformity with his instructions, he had long ere this been behind the Coa, but deeply enamoured of his separate command as ever youth was of his mistress, he seemed resolved that nothing but force should part them; and having gradually given ground, as necessity compelled, the 23d of July found him with his back on the river, and his left resting on the fortress of Almeida, determined to abide a battle, with about five thousand men of all arms to oppose the whole French army. I shall leave to abler pens the description of the action that followed, and which (as might have been foreseen, while it was highly honourable to the officers and troops engaged) ended in their being driven across the Coa with a severe loss. My business is with a youth who had the day before joined the division. The history of his next day's adventure has beguiled me of many a hearty laugh, and although I despair of being able to communicate it to my readers with any thing like the humour with which I received it from an amiable and gallant friend, yet I cannot resist giving it such as it rests on my remembrance. Mr. Rogers, as already stated, had, the day before, arrived from England, as an officer of one of the civil departments attached to the light division, and as might be expected on finding himself all at once up with the outposts of the army, he was full of curiosity and excitement. Equipped in a huge cocked hat, and a hermaphrodite sort of scarlet coat, half military and half civil, he was dancing about with his budget of inquiries, when chance threw him in the way of the gallant and lamented Jock Mac Culloch, at the time a lieutenant in the Rifles, and who was in the act of marching off a company to relieve one of the picquets for the night. Mac Culloch, full of humour, seeing the curiosity of the fresh arrival, said, "Come, Rogers, my boy, come along with me, you shall share my beefsteak, you shall share my boat-cloak, and it will go hard with me but you shall see a Frenchman, too, before we part in the morning." The invitation was not to be resisted, and away went Rogers on the spur of the moment. The night turned out a regular Tam o'Shanter's night, or, if the reader pleases, a Wellington night, for it is a singular fact that almost every one of his battles was preceded by such a night;--the thunder rolled, the lightning flashed, and all the fire-engines in the world seemed playing upon the lightning, and the devoted heads of those exposed to it. It was a sort of night that was well calculated to be a damper to a bolder spirit than the one whose story I am relating; but he, nevertheless, sheltered himself as he best could, under the veteran's cloak, and put as good a face upon it as circumstances would permit.