Relieved from the out-picquet on the Nogales road just as the winter dusk was deepening, he passed through the gloomy streets of Lugo, where ammunition waggons, unclaimed or abandoned baggage, and dead horses weltering in pools of dark blood, added greatly to the confusion of those crowded, ancient, narrow, and decidedly dirty thoroughfares; which were destitute alike of lamps, pavement, and police, and were full of holes, puddles, mud, and mire. There were sentinels, with bayonets fixed, at the doors of all the wine-shops and bodegas; yet crowds of famished soldiers loitered about them, while the dreaded provost-marshal guard, with cord and triangles, and patrols of horse and foot passed slowly to and fro in every direction, to enforce that order which the alcalde and his alguazils considered hopeless. Quentin soon found, however, where the colonel and colours of the Borderers were lodged. It was an old mansion which had once belonged to the Knights of Santiago, the highest order of chivalry in Spain; and above its arched door, where two of the colonel's servants were chatting and smoking--one leisurely polishing a pair of hessian boots, and the other oiling the harness of his charger--he saw carved on a large marble block the badge of the order: a sword _gules_, the hilt powdered with fleurs-de-lis, and the stern motto, _Sanguine Arabum_. It happened, though seated over his wine, after such a dinner as the exigencies of the time enabled him to procure, and though in company with his old friend the gallant and fashionable Lord Paget, then in his fortieth year, rehearsing together their gay but somewhat coarse memories and experiences of Carlton House and the Pavilion, the Honourable Cosmo was far from being in the best of humours. A full conviction of the sudden and disastrous turn in the prospects of the expedition--the army was now only fighting to escape home--together with the knowledge that on landing in England a horde of harpies--Jews, lawyers, and tipstaves, were all ready to pounce upon him, with protested bills, accounts, I.O.U.'s, post-obits, bonds, and Heaven only knows what more, the result of his Guards' life and reckless expenditure in London--all this, we say, well nigh drove him frantic; and Paget's memories of their brilliant past, and their wild, disreputable orgies with the Prince of Wales and his set, added stings to the terror with which he viewed the future. Flora's fair acres might have stood in the gap between him and ruin, but fate and Quentin Kennedy ordained it should be otherwise. "Egad, Paget, you see how it is; I've drained the paternal pump dry--there are bounds to patience, and his lordship will not advance me another guinea beyond my allowance. Indeed, I could scarcely expect it; and thus, I dare not land in England!"