Three or four of us were seated round the wide fireplace of a Spanish hearth, after taking off our well drenched jackets and accoutrements, and were enjoying the benefit of a fine blazing pile of fire, the very counterpart of that I have just described, and our servants were preparing for the culinary operations, when a loud hammering was heard at the door of the hovel, accompanied by the clanking of carbines, sabres, sabredashes, and other warlike appurtenances. At the same moment, in burst a tall, raw-boned trooper, (armed cap-a-pied, with a countenance well furnished with a most abundant crop, in which the crows might have built their nest,) followed by two others, carrying sundry hampers belonging to their masters. The intruder, who proved to be the officer commanding, gazed with awful stare upon the lodgers already in the house, and drawing himself up, as if, like Sampson, he were about to raise the building on his shoulders, called, or rather growled out, in the tone of an angry mastiff, while he curled the points of his black mustachios, "these quarters are not too good for a Col--o--nel of Dra--goons--eh!" and suiting the action to the word, he flung his implements of war on a table close at hand, with a degree of violence that shook our frail tenement to its base. His claims to supremacy being intimated to us, we gathered up our traps, and bundled out indignantly, looking round, with no very gracious glances, at the statue in whose possession we quietly left the premises, to go in search of another billet. There was a want of courtesy and good feeling here, not in any way consistent with high bearing, and these, with many other traits of character, produced a jealousy between us, so that no very cordial intimacy could take place; nor was there much love wasted on either side. Engaged in one common cause, in duty on the same field together, all those ideas of superiority should have been forgotten, and those heroes with spurs of at least half a yard in length, should have packed up all their high opinions and fine notions, and sent them to the stores in England, there to be made use of at some future period. Such commodities never do for service, nor will they harmonize with camp or bivouac. They may pass current at home, where the pride of wealth, gold lace, and dress, go far to raise a man in public estimation; but lying in a wet ditch, or stretched by the side of a tree upon the ground, with a tattered cloak for covering, they are of little value. In that situation, a good blanket, and a well filled haversack, are worth all the lace, fringe, feathers, and aiguillettes in the British army.