About four in the afternoon, during a partial cessation of the sleet and rain which had been incessant for so many days, melting the snow on the mountains and swelling the rivers, Quentin found himself posted as an advanced sentinel in front of the line of out-picquets, near the road leading from Lugo to Nogales. Dark clouds enveloped the mighty range of mountains in the distance, but from their summits it was known, by the intelligence of scouts, that the enemy was descending in force. A blue patch was visible here and there overhead, through the flying vapour, and there, already bright and twinkling, a few "sentinel stars set their watch in the sky." After the slaughter of the worn or half-dead cavalry horses, all was still, and now not a sound stirred the air save the tolling of the cathedral bell in Lugo, or the roar of the Minho, swollen by a hundred tributaries, and rushing in wild career through an uncultivated waste of stunted laurel bushes to mingle with the Atlantic. That day Quentin had tasted no food save a handful of corn which he received from Major Middleton, whom he had found fraternally sharing a feed of it with his now lean and gaunt Rosinante-looking charger, which he had stabled under a cork-tree and covered with his blanket, complimenting himself by the old adage that "a merciful man is merciful to his beast." Oppressed by the sombre scenery, the drenched and uncultivated waste, and the gloom of the December evening, Quentin leaned on his musket, a prey to a fit of intense despondency, and tears almost came to his eyes as he thought of all the horrors he had witnessed since the day on which he landed at the bay of Maciera, the campaign he had served so fruitlessly, and of what was before him on landing, friendlessly, in England. Better it was to die in Spain, like poor Warriston, whose dead face, as he lay with others, mangled and doubtless yet unburied, in that savage mountain waste, amid the melting snows, came keenly back to memory now! From this unpleasant reverie he was suddenly roused by seeing a mounted officer, muffled in a blue cloak, with a plain unplumed cocked-hat, riding along the chain of advanced sentinels, questioning or addressing a few words to each, as if to ascertain that all were on the alert. Gradually he came on, his horse, a lean but clean-limbed and active bay, picking its way among the rough stones and stunted laurel bushes. As he drew nearer, Quentin could perceive him to be a general officer, accompanied, at a little distance, by an orderly sergeant in the blue, white-faced, and silver-braided uniform of the 18th Hussars. On his approaching, Quentin "presented arms."