On the advance to this place, I became acquainted with a lad of the name of Henry G——. While on guard with him one day, I perceived him reading a book, which, on inquiry, I found to be Cromek’s Remains of Nithsdale and Galloway Song, which he had borrowed from an officer’s servant. Books of any kind were rare amongst us at that time, but one of this description had too much nationality in it, not to be considered a valuable prize in a foreign land. We read the book together, and a similarity of feeling and sentiment subsequently led to a friendship which continued unimpaired while we remained in the Peninsula. In his romantic turn of mind and acute sensibility, he bore a strong resemblance to my former friend and shipmate, William. He had read a great deal, but, like myself, he had read with little discrimination. The effects were nearly the same in both, a propensity to day-dreaming and castle-building. Many a weary mile have we travelled together, almost unconscious of progression, charming the sense of hunger away by anticipating our future honour and preferment, and in forming romantic schemes of rural retirement, when our campaigns were ended. This peculiarity of disposition, although it might sometimes occasion us uneasiness, where others, less sensitive, felt but little, yet, on the whole, in a life like ours, where the scene was continually shifting, it rendered our minds more elastic; and the continual play of fancy which was thus excited, diversified the lights and shadows so much, that even now, I am at a loss to say, whether at that time I felt more pain or pleasure. We had only been a few days in quarters, when my friend Henry was near being involved in an affair, the consequence of which would have ruined a mind like his for ever. The captain of his company was a man of a strange disposition, which rendered him an object of dislike to both officers and men. A fellow of infinite jest, he rarely spoke but in a humorous strain; but there was ‘a laughing devil in his sneer,’ and, like the cat, when she has secured her prey, he always felt most inclined to sport with the individual on whose destruction he was bent. It would be endless to enter into a detail of the methods by which he tormented his company,—those who served under him will remember them well; suffice it to say, that I have known many officers who possessed bad qualities, but none who possessed fewer good ones than Captain S.