Nearly a quire of paper was expended before he could get a despatch worded to his own and Macdonald’s satisfaction,—one giving as brief and concise an account as possible of his adventures, and declaring that the reason of his sudden departure from Almarez was to free the sister of Don Alvaro, of Villa Franca, from Cifuentes the well-known bandit, who had accompanied the first brigade disguised as a priest. Evan was despatched with the letter to the colonel’s quarters, while Stuart and Macdonald, accompanied by De Mesmai, went to visit D’Estouville,—the unfortunate commandant of fort Napoleon, who was dying of the wound he had received from the officer of the 71st. An old chapel, situated near the baths of Diana, had been appropriated as an hospital for those wounded at the forts of Almarez. The design of some gothic architect when the art was in its infancy, it was a low dark building, with short clumsy columns, gloomy arches, enormously thick walls, and dismal little windows, between the thick mullions of which the grey day-light seemed to struggle to be seen. On the worn flight of steps ascending to the great door-way, lay a few dozen legs, arms, hands, and feet, which had been amputated and were lying there until the hospital orderlies were at leisure to inter them. During the last war, the reckless manner in which medical officers hewed off wounded limbs, without attempting to reduce a fracture, has been often reprehended. What a scene of multiplied human misery the interior of the chapel presented! The wounded soldiers, British and French, to the number of some hundreds, lay in ranks on the damp pavement, over which a little straw was thrown, as no bedding could be given them. Deep and hollow groans of acute agony and suffering sounded from many parts of the building, and the continual rustling of the straw announced the impatient restlessness of sickness and pain. Here lay the gallant and high-spirited conscript, brooding gloomily, and almost weeping, over those visions of glory, which the amputation of a leg had suddenly cut short; and there the stern grenadier of the Imperial guard lay coolly surveying his own blood as it trickled through the straw, and filled the carved letters of epitaphs on the pavement stones. Near him lay his conqueror, the British soldier, shorn of a limb, dejected and miserable, having nothing before him now but a "passport to beg," and the poor apology for a pension which grateful Britain bestows on her defenders, with the happy resource of starving in a parish workhouse. All were pale as death, and all disfigured by blood and bandages,—grisly, ghastly, unwashed, and unshaven. Often as they passed up the aisle, Stuart and Macdonald held the tin canteen to the parched lips of some wounded man, who drank greedily of the hot stale water it contained, and prayed them piteously to adjust his bandages, or by doing some little office to alleviate his pain. Some were dying, and lay convulsed among