"There, lads, I congratulate you heartily," he said as they issued from the gate, in answer to the warm thanks in which the boys expressed their gratitude to him; "it is a stroke of luck indeed that you came with me to Bordeaux. It was rough-and-ready justice, and I don't suppose a court of law in England would approve of it; but we are under martial law, so even were that fellow disposed to question the matter, which you may be very sure he will not, we are safe enough. They say 'ill-gotten gains fly fast' but the scamp has prospered on the money he stole. He owned to having another hundred thousand safe in the States, and no doubt he has at least as much more in securities of one sort or other here. I daresay he was in earnest when he said that he did not mind paying the money to get rid of the chance of detection and punishment, which must have been ever in his mind. The best thing you can do, Scudamore, is to write to James Pearson--he's my solicitor in London--and give him authority to present this draft, and invest the sum in your joint names in good securities. Inclose the draft. I shall be sending off an orderly with despatches and letters at daybreak, and if you give me your letter to-night, I will inclose it in a note of my own to Pearson." Five days later an order arrived for Lord Beresford to leave the seventh division under Lord Dalhousie, in Bordeaux, and to march with the fourth division to join the Commander-in-Chief, who was gradually drawing near to Toulouse, beneath whose walls Soult was reorganizing his army. The position was a very strong one, and had been rendered almost impregnable by fortifications thrown upon the heights. Wellington had, too, the disadvantage of having to separate his army, as the town lay upon both sides of the Garonne. On the 10th of April the allied army attacked. Hill attacked the defences of the town on the left bank, while Freyre's Spaniards, Picton, with the third and light divisions, and Beresford with the fourth and the sixth divisions, assaulted a French position. The entrenchments in front of Picton were too strong to be more than menaced. Freyre's Spaniards were repulsed with great loss, and the brunt of the battle fell upon Beresford's division, which nobly sustained the character of the British soldier for stubborn valor in this the last battle of the war. The French fought stubbornly and well, but fort by fort the British drove them from their strong positions, and at five in the afternoon Soult withdrew the last of his troops in good order across the canal which separated the position they had defended from the town itself. The French lost five generals and 3000 killed and wounded; the allies four generals and 4659 killed and wounded, of which 2000 were Spaniards, for they upon this occasion fought bravely, though unsuccessfully.