Along the chain of heights, strong redoubts and block-houses were placed at intervals. The last were composed of horizontal logs, loop-holed for musquetry, and occupied by strong picquets, who were continually on the alert, in case Marshal Soult might again pay them some sudden visit from Gascony. One night in October, Ronald Stuart with his company were on duty in one of these blockhouses, when a sudden attack was made on the position by the enemy. There had been a great fall of snow, and the intense cold by which it was accompanied added greatly to the discomfort of the troops encamped on these bleak and lofty mountains, with no other shelter against the inclemencies of the weather, day and night, than canvas tents. The hills and valleys were completely covered to the depth of several feet, and many sentinels were lost, or found dreadfully frost-bitten when dug out. A path had been made from the Maya camp to the block-house which Stuart was to occupy; and as his company marched along the slippery and winding roadway, they often saw Spanish peasants or guerillas lying dead with shovels near them, showing that they perished with the intensity of the cold whilst engaged on some working or fatigue-party. In some places a frozen grisly head, or shrunken hand, clenched and withered, appeared above the smooth white surface of the snow. Had the view around the block-house been in Greenland or Newfoundland, it could not have presented a more dreary aspect. The whole of the Pyrenean chain, and the plains of Bearn and Gascony below, were clad in the same white livery. The sky was of the purest, deepest, and coldest blue, showing the most distant summits of the Pyrenean chain, the white peaks of which rose in long perspective beyond each other in an infinity of outlines. The dense smoke from the camp fires was curling up from amidst the dingy-coloured tents, where now and then the beat of a drum rang out sharply into the clear and frosty air.