The elder child looked up in her face for some time with anxiety; at last he said, ‘Mother, why don’t you speak to me?—what ails you?—what makes you so pale?—O speak to me, mother, do speak to me!’ A doubt seemed to cross her mind—without noticing the child, she again raised the mangled corpse, looked narrowly at his face, and carefully inspected the mark of his accoutrements—but it was too true—it was her husband. Neither sigh, nor groan, nor tear escaped her; but sitting down, she raised the lifeless body, and placing his head on her knee, gazed on his face with feelings too deep for utterance. The child now drew himself close to her side, and looking at the bleeding corpse which she sustained, in a piteous tone, inquired, ‘Is that my father? is he asleep? why doesn’t he speak to you? I’ll waken him for you’—and seizing his hand, he drew it towards him, but suddenly relapsing his hold, he cried, ‘O mother! his hand is cold—cold as ice.’ Her attention had been drawn for some moments to the child: at length bursting out, she exclaimed, ‘Poor orphan! he sleeps, never to wake again—never, O never, will he speak to you or me!’ The child did not seem to understand her, but he began to cry. She continued, ‘O my God! my heart will burst, my very brain burns—but I can’t cry—Surely my heart is hard—I used to cry when he was displeased with me—and now I can’t cry when he is dead! O my husband! my murdered husband!—Ay, murdered,’ said she, wiping the blood that flowed from a wound in his breast. ‘O my poor children!’ drawing them to her bosom, ‘what will become of you?’ Here she began to talk incoherently—‘Will you not speak to me, William?—will you not speak to your dear Ellen? Last night you told me you were going on guard, and you would return in the morning, but you did not come—I thought you were deceiving me, and I came to look for you.’ She now ceased to speak, and rocked backwards and forwards over the bleeding corpse; but her parched quivering lip, and wild fixed look, showed the agonized workings of her mind. I stood not an unmoved spectator of this scene, but I did not interrupt it. I considered her sorrow too deep and sacred for commonplace consolation. A woman and two men of the same regiment who had been in search of her, now came up and spoke to her, but she took no notice of them. A party also who were burying the dead joined them, and they crowded round striving to console her. I then withdrew, and hastened on to the camp, my mind filled with melancholy reflections; for many days after I felt a weight on my mind, and even now I retain a vivid recollection of that affecting scene. But she was not a solitary sufferer: many a widow and orphan was made by the siege and storming of Badajos; our loss amounting, in killed and wounded, to about three thousand men.