"Butts to the front," an order then in use, was given by Monkton and each officer in succession, after which the ranks were opened, and every man blew down the barrel of his musket, so that by applying a hand to the touch-hole the real state of the vent was ascertained by the inspector. "Handle arms--with ball cartridge, prime, and load--secure arms!" followed rapidly, and away went the out-picquets, double-quick, through rain and mire, wind and storm, to their several posts, Monkton's being a mile and a half beyond the bridge of the Ajada, in tolerably open ground, interspersed with groups of little trees. Under one of these he sheltered his picquet, and two hundred yards in front of it posted his line of sentinels, with orders not to walk to and fro, but to stand steadily on their posts, to look straight to their front, to fire on all who could not give the countersign, and to keep up a regular communication with each other and with those of the picquets on both flanks; and then each man was left for his solitary hour, the time allotted for such duty when in front of an enemy. About daybreak, after a short nap in the thicket, and after imbibing a sip from his canteen of rum grog--the last of its contents--Quentin found himself on this solitary but important duty, posted on the centre of the highway, gazing steadily into the murky obscurity before him, and thanking Heaven in his heart that the rain had ceased, and that the cold and biting December wind was passing away. CHAPTER VIII. A MESSAGE FROM THE ENEMY. "'Tis true, unruffled and serene I've met The common accidents of life, but here Such an unlooked-for storm of ills falls on me It beats down all my strength--I cannot bear it." ADDISON. This was not the first occasion on which Quentin had enacted the part of sentinel; but never had he done so with the knowledge that the enemy was before him, and perhaps at that moment closer than he had any idea of, among the mist that obscured the landscape. All was quiet in front and rear; save the drip of the last night's rain from an over-charged leaf, or the croaking of the bull-frogs in a marsh close by, not a sound broke the stillness. The dull grey winter morning stole slowly in; the distant mountain peaks of the Guadarama grew red, but all else remained opaque and dim, save the jagged summits of that lofty _sierra_--a Spanish word very descriptive of a range of conical hills, being evidently (as we are informed by a letter of the dominie) derived from _serra_, the Latin word for a saw.