A shout of welcome rose as they entered the tent, where a dozen officers were sitting on the ground, or on empty boxes. "Sit down if you can find room, Terence," Colonel Corcoran said. "Wouldn't you like to be back with us again, for the shindy that we are likely to have, tomorrow?" "That I should, but I hope to have my share in it, in my own way." "Where are your men, O'Connor?" "They will be, in another hour, at the foot of the mountains over there to the left. Our business will be to prevent any of the French moving along there, and coming down on your rear." "I am pleased to hear it. I believe that there is a Spanish division there, but I am glad to know that the business is not to be left entirely to them. Now, what have you been doing since you left us, a month ago?" "I have been doing nothing, Colonel, but watching the defiles and, as no one has come up them, we have not fired a shot." "No doubt they got news that you were there, Terence," O'Grady said, "and not likely would they be to come up to be destroyed by you." "Perhaps that was it," Terence said, when the laughter had subsided; "at any rate they didn't show up, and I was very pleased when orders came, at ten o'clock yesterday, for us to leave Banos and march to join the army. We did the forty miles in fourteen hours." "Good marching," Colonel Corcoran said. "Then where did you halt?" "About three miles farther off, at the foot of the hills. We saw a lot of campfires to our right, and thought that we were in a line with the army, but of course they were only those of Mackenzie's division; but I sent off an orderly, an hour ago, to tell them to fall back to the slopes facing those hills, where our left is to be posted." "You are a lucky fellow to have been away from us, Terence, for it is downright starving we have been. The soldiers have only had a mouthful of meat served out to them as rations, most days; and they have got so thin that their clothes are hanging loose about them. If it hadn't been for my man Doolan and two or three others, who always manage, by hook or by crook, to get hold of anything there is within two or three miles round, we should have been as badly off as they are. Be jabers, I have had to take in my sword belt a good two inches; and to think that, while our fellows are well-nigh starving, these Spaniards we came to help, and who will do no fighting themselves, had more food than they could eat, is enough to enrage a saint. "I wonder Sir Arthur puts up with it. I would have seized that stuck-up old fool Cuesta, and popped him into the guard tent, and kept him there until provisions were handed over for us." "His whole army might come to rescue him, O'Grady." "What if they had? I would have turned out a corporal's guard, and sent the whole of them trotting off in no time. Did you hear what took place two days ago?"