Stuart remarked that there was not a single Scottish bonnet in the room, and his national abhorrence of gambling caused him absolutely to blush at being there. He was disgusted at the wild eagerness, the intense anxiety, the bitter disappointment, fierce anguish, or cruel triumph which he witnessed in the features of the players. The two dollars De Mesmai had borrowed were soon added to the goodly pile which lay before an officer of the 39th; and urged on by the former, Ronald betted on several cards, all of which turned up fatally, and he had the mortification to behold every one of his remaining dollars swept across the table in quick succession, and coolly pocketed by a fierce-looking Spanish officer of De Costa’s brigade, who evidently thought it no sin to gamble, although he wore on his left breast the enamelled red cross of Calatrava, a religious order of knighthood.[*] Ronald rushed away from the hell, feeling absolutely furious at his own folly and at De Mesmai, who, however, continued at the table in hopes of borrowing from some one. [*] Instituted by Don Santio of Toledo, in 1130. The lesson was not lost on Stuart, who, from that day until this, has never touched a card. But that night’s play left him literally penniless, and in a strange city. He was ashamed to apply to any of his brother-officers, or expose his folly to them; and as Gordon, the regimental paymaster, had not received the arrears of pay, there was nothing to be hoped for from him. It was now dusk, and he was wandering among the groves of olive and willow that flourish by the sedgy banks of the Guadiana and overhang its current. Here, while pursuing the narrow pathway by the river-side, he was surprised by seeing the figure of Dugald Mhor Cameron, the colonel’s private servant, standing at a short distance from him; a sure sign that Cameron himself was not far off. Dugald Mhor (or big Dugald) was an aged but hardy Highlander, from the country of the Cameron, or the land of the great Lochiel on the banks of Loch Linnhe, among the wild dark mountains of Lorn and Morven,—the Morven of Ossian. From these he came to follow the son of the laird through the continental wars, and he had been by the side of Cameron in every battle in which the corps had been engaged in Egypt, Denmark, Holland, Portugal, and Spain, and had been twice wounded,—once at Bergen-op-Zoom, and again at the battle of Alexandria in Egypt. Dugald was nearly seventy years of age, yet his well-knit frame was strong and muscular as that of a horse, and his hair was white as snow; while his face was as dark as his tartan, by constant exposure to the weather.