On the fifth morning after the commissary had delivered the rations above mentioned, we had a very sharp brush with the enemy. A company of infantry and a few dragoons were ordered to dislodge the French from a house in which they had a party, and which was necessary to the security of our position; for from this house they used to sally upon our pickets in a most annoying manner. The French, not more than about fifty in number, made a considerable resistance: they received the English with a volley from the windows, and immediately retreated to a high bank behind the house: from this point they continued to fire until their flank was threatened by our dragoons, when they retreated in double-quick disorder, leaving about fifteen killed and wounded. Our men were then starving. The poor fellows, although they had forgotten their animal wants in the execution of their duty, plainly displayed in their faces the weakness of their bodies. Every man of the crowded encampment looked wan and melancholy; but all kept up their flagging spirits by resolution and patience. Many a manly fellow felt in silence the bitterness of his situation, and many a forced Hibernian joke was passed from a suffering heart to lighten a comrade's cares. There was no upbraiding, for all were sufferers alike; and, with the exception of a few pardonable curses on the commissary, there was no symptom of turbulence—all was manly patience. In about an hour after the taking of the old house in front, I went out from our huts in a wood to see the place of action. I met four or five of our men wounded, led and carried by their comrades. The officer commanding the party now joined me, and walked back to the house, to give farther directions regarding other wounded men not yet removed. When we had gone about fifty yards, we met a wounded soldier carried very slowly in a blanket by four men. As soon as he saw the officer who was along with me, he cried out in a feeble but forced voice, “Stop! stop!—lay me down:—let me speak to the Captain.” The surgeon, who was along with him, had no objection, for (in my opinion) he thought the man beyond the power of his skill, and the sufferer was laid gently down upon the turf, under the shade of a projecting rock. I knew the wounded man's face in a moment, for I had often remarked him as being a steady well-conducted soldier: his age was about forty-one or two, and he had a wife and two children in England. I saw death in the poor fellow's face. He was shot in the throat—or rather between the shoulder and the throat: the ball passed apparently downwards, probably from having been fired from the little hill on which the French posted themselves when they left the house. The blood gurgled from the wound at every exertion he made to speak. I asked the surgeon what he thought of the man, and that gentleman whispered, “It is all over with him.” He said he had done every thing he could to stop the blood, but found,