As for Tom, he was too fatigued to even think. Once his wounded were collected and his dead buried, a gruesome job for any commander, he dropped dead asleep in his blanket. He recked not of the work before him. His slumbering mind cared not a jot for the dangers of the task which his commander had given him. If there had been fifty spies to capture, if there had been fifty mysteries hanging about the persons of the rascal José and Tom's two relatives abducted from Oporto, that young fellow would still have slept. For he had fought his first big engagement. He had done strenuous work, and nature called aloud for repose for both body and brain before he took up other responsibilities. Till the morrow, then, we leave him till the rising sun awaked in his thoughts the memory of those urgent orders. CHAPTER XVII A Clue at Last Those 40,000 victorious men of Wellington's great army now had their backs to the Portuguese frontier and were marching gaily on Madrid. Away in front a half-battalion of infantry watched for the French and found no trace of them. The guard in rear had an easy time of it, for attack was not to be feared from that quarter; while the cavalry patrols on either flank reported a country clear of all but peasants. As for the road itself, it was littered with carts of every description, not the motor lorries which to-day have achieved a triumph, making light of the task of hauling the stores and impedimenta of an army, but with mule carts in endless array, and four-wheeled and two-wheeled vehicles with their teams of mules and their gaudily-hatted drivers. "Of all the aggravating, lazy beggars these are the worst I ever set eyes on," growled Jack Barwood, in command now of Tom's composite corps of Portuguese and Spanish; for that young fellow himself, together with Alfonso his cousin, had departed on special service. And didn't the great Jack give himself airs! Riding at the head of the corps he looked about him as does a conqueror. And these muleteers came in for his displeasure. "Straggling all over the road as usual. How's one to pass here?" he demanded of Andrews, who was marching beside him, and pointing to a batch of vehicles wedged in a rocky part of the road where a detour was almost impossible. "Move 'em, sir," came the answer, while the rifleman suppressed a grin of amusement. Jack was a favourite with them all, but he sometimes excited their ridicule. He was different from the steady and yet dashing Tom. "Move 'em, sir, or interview one of these blackguards conducting the caravan. Look at the beggar nearest; stares at us as if we hadn't a right on the road, when we all know we're here to fight the Spaniards' own battles. Precious fine help they give us too! The only time they're out of the way is when fightin's wanted. Hi, you, you son of a gun, move along with you!"