'My mother never held up her head afterwards--and--and three days ago she left me--and--and they brought her here,' said the boy, with a fresh fit of heavy weeping, as he pressed his knuckles into his inflamed eyes. In tatters, and dusky in complexion, yet rich in colour, like the beggar-boys of Murillo's famous picture in the Dulwich Gallery, he was a handsome little fellow, with a clear olive skin, sparkling eyes of the deepest hazel, and thick, wavy black hair. 'Have you no brother or sister?' asked the officer, patting his uncovered head, for poor José was without hat or cap. 'None now. I had a sister once.' 'And she?' 'Was carried off by the French voltigeurs, and was never seen again. Poor Theresa!' said the boy, in a gasping voice. 'And have you no home, my little fellow?' 'None, but the church porch.' 'Then come with me, and I will find you another.' 'Where, senhor?' 'Under the colours of His Majesty Pedro the Third.' The boy's face lighted up. It was too soon for him to despair yet; he had youth and hope, 'youth, with which the linen folds seem robes of purple, the chaplet of cowslips becomes a monarch's crown, and the wooden bench is as an ivory throne of empire.' So little José Francisco de Castro, for such was his name, gave his hand in confidence to Captain Dom Pedro de Lobiera, and became a bugle-boy in the Seventh Regiment of Cazadores, among the Portuguese troops under the gallant Marshal Beresford, and destined to co-operate more immediately with that division of the British army which, led by Lieutenant-General Sir John Hope, took possession of Lisbon in 1808. A curious combination of wrath and exultation made José's heart beat tumultuously on the day he first assumed his uniform, and he slung with a green cord over his shoulder the bugle with which he was to summon his comrades. He had an admirable ear for music, and soon mastered all the many bugle-calls requisite for the man[oe]uvres of light troops in the field, and by his coolness and bravery, while yet in his teens, became a prime favourite with his captain, with his colonel, the Viscount de Sa (whose 'orderly bugler' he became), and with the whole of the Seventh Cazadores he became a species of regimental pet. When the battle of Salamanca was won by Wellington in the glorious summer of 1812, when we attacked the Duc de Ragusa, and when Park's Portuguese column was foiled in the first attempt to storm the Arapiles, two steep, rugged, and solitary hills that overlook the plain, it was José's bugle sounding the 'rally' amid the hottest of the fire that caused the southern hill to be re-won; and when Marshal Beresford was unhorsed and wounded in the leg, while charging at the head of the 11th Light Dragoons, and again while leading a Portuguese brigade, it was 'José de Castro, a bugle-boy of the Seventh Cazadores,' that helped him to remount, as the _Portuguiz Telegrafo_ of that week records.