The grenadiers of the Borderers were all billeted in a narrow and antique street, which was overshadowed by the vast façade of the cathedral; and there, from the open lattices of their room (in a house the proprietors of which were either dead or had fled) Askerne and Quentin sat smoking cigars and enjoying some of the purple wine of Oporto, from the cool, vaulted _bodega_ of a neighbouring wine-house, and with their feet planted on a charcoal _brasero_, they felt, on the evening after their arrival, for the first time, that they were somewhat at home and could take their ease, with belts off and coats unbuttoned. And so they sat and watched, almost in silence, the swift-coming shadows of the October evening as they deepened in the quaint vista of the old Portuguese street, where the costumes were so striking and singular; the citizen who seemed to have no lawful occupation but smoking, in his ragged mantle and broad sombrero; a secular priest with his ample paunch and shovel-shaped chapeau; a white-robed Carmelite or grey Franciscan, flitting, ghostlike, amid the masses of red coats who lounged about the doors and arcades, most of them smoking, and all chatting and laughing, till the stars came out, when the bugles would sound tattoo, and when all loiterers would have to turn in, save the quarter guards and inlying picquet. These were ordered to be of considerable strength, as a numerous band of homeless and lawless Spanish and Portuguese guerillas, under a runaway student of Salamanca, named Baltasar de Saldos, hovered among the hills. This band was of somewhat dubious loyalty, as the members of it, more than once, had scuffles with the British foraging parties, and even fired on them--the alliance between this country and Spain being so recent, that after the long and vexatious wars of the preceding century, the people could not understand it. CHAPTER X. COSMO'S CRAFT. "Small occasions in the path of life, Lie thickly sown, while great are rarely scattered. * * * * * Shame seize me, if I would not rather be The man thou art, than court-created chief Known only by the dates of his promotion!" JOANNA BAILLIE. The two first days after Quentin's arrival in Portalegre, were varied by the flogging of soldiers for marauding, when they were four months in arrears of pay. One of these men was flogged by tap of drum; a measure by which half a minute was allowed to elapse between each stroke, greatly enhancing the agony; and this process went on during more than four hundred lashes, till the bare muscles were seen to quiver under the cats, and then he was removed. On the second day, the troops that had recently arrived from England, together with a battalion of Cazadores from Lisbon, were paraded outside the walls of the little mountain city for the inspection of the lieutenant-general commanding.