been realized. Angela's love had left the sharp sting behind, and every soaring vulture brought the wrathful, menacing Griffone to his remembrance.

Oppressed by his thoughts, about midnight, he sunk into an uneasy sleep, from which he was suddenly aroused by the strangest and most terrible clamour. Starting up, he beheld, as he thought, the whole wood in flames. The fire danced and leaped from tree to tree, throwing out innumerable sparks. The soldiers were running about, shouting as if possessed by evil spirits, and a herd of wild bulls with fiery horns seemed to be pursuing them in all directions, crashing in their furious career the slender pine-trees to splinters. Astounded alike by the suddenness of the thing, the dreadful noises, the terrific sights, Guillelmo gazed, bewildered, for a moment. Suddenly he beheld, as he thought, Angela flying towards him, pursued by four monstrous bulls, on the backs of three of which sat the wicked padres hissing with all their might; but, on the fourth and foremost stood Griffone himself in his human shape, upright and tall, and stern as he appeared in the dream; in his hands he grasped bundles of serpents, which he hurled before him with dreadful shouts. Maddened by this terrible sight, Guillelmo, catching up what seemed to him Angela, fled with incredible velocity towards the little stream below, at the foot of the hill; but scarcely had he gained the middle of the water when the illusion was dispelled. The peasants had truly spoken-it was the devil's work.

A general panic had seized the camp; none escaped its influence. The noise was the fearful cry of five thousand bewildered or bedevilled soldiers. The bulls were the camp animals, who, apparently as insane as their masters, had burst their fastenings, and were galloping wildly abroad, breaking the tall, slender pine-trees like reeds, overturning the piles of musquets, and dashing about the embers of the bivouac fires thus creating the belief that they were monsters all flaming and furious to destroy. Griffone, and the padres, existed only in Guillelmo's imagination. Angela proved to be a brother officer, speaking with a broad provincial accent, and of Herculean dimensions and weight, whom Guillelmo had, nevertheless, in the mad hurry of the moment, carried away as if he had been an infant.

Calm, and clear, and glorious was the night which preceded the fight of Busaco, and so innumerable and bright were the watch-fires, that it seemed as if the mountain tops had been lifted to the sky and thrust amidst the starry hosts. But if the night's illusion elevated the scene towards heaven, that of the morning dawn seemed to sink the dark valley below to 'he bottomless pit; for the battle commenced there, and the terrible cries, and the thundering sounds of the musquetry, and the rolling of the sulphury clouds of smoke, through which the eye could only

distinguish black and furious figures bounding and rushing to and fro, and dealing around them quick flashing fires of death, appeared to announce that the bonds of hell had been broken, and the demons ascending, with all their terrors, to the upper world.

The contest was fierce and bloody, the French were repulsed, and the troops on both sides were resting on their arms in the evening when a Portuguese peasant girl was observed winding her way, apparently unheeded by any, through the midst of the French lines she descended the mountain, crossed the valley, and ascended to the British camp, where the soldiers, who had been watching her progress, instantly gathered about her, curious to know what she might be who could thus so calmly pass through fighting armies. And much they were moved in their feelings when they found that her only talisman of safety was the extreme innocence of her mind. No idea of danger had ever crossed her thoughts, she suspected nothing, feared nothing, doubted nothing, and her confiding simplicity had been as a panoply of steel around her. God walked with her, and men wondered at, but could not injure, the poor wandering maiden. And she, in her turn, marvelled as much at them she marvelled that they could live on the mountain ridge; she marvelled at their numbers, at their array, and with many expressions of pity, exclaimed upon their hard fate—“ Coitadinhos," she repeated. ly exclaimed," Coitadinhos Naõ tem casa ni pan, ni sel,”-Poor things, poor things, they have no homes, no bread, no salt!

The laughter of the soldiers when they heard this poor girl, whom they looked upon as scarcely better off than Daniel in the lions' den, thus express her pity for their sufferings, was loud and boisterous; she looked around her with wonder at the cause of their merriment, when suddenly her eyes rested on the officer, and she instantly exclaimed," Ah! Don Guillelmo!" she was one of the poor village girls of Das Iras. He took her on one side and eagerly inquired about the fate of the beautiful valley and its inhabitants. Her tale was short. It was still the valley of wrath; the enemy had inundated it, the villagers had dispersed in terror; she herself was going to seek a quieter abode. Guillelmo, with a beating heart but a careless manner, mentioned Angela; the girl smiled, but instantly assuming a look of sorrow, said she feared some evil had befallen her, not from the enemy, but through the means of the padres; for soon after the officer had quitted the village strange men had come to Angela's house and carried her away with them: not indeed by violence, but against her inclination, as it was observed that she wept bitterly.

Struck to the soul by the intelligence, Guillelmo turned to hide his emotion; the poor girl, seeing that he was deeply affected, gave him to understand that she knew the cause, and endeavoured to comfort him

by saying, that she thought no mischief could have happened to her, as she went with those who came for her, without resisting, showing more sorrow than fear. These kind efforts had some power to alleviate his grief. But what can a soldier do with feelings of this nature in wartime? He has not leisure for mental distress. Let his heart be softened by beauty, or melted by misery, the next moment he must retemper it to meet the terrible incidents of his profession; he may be sick with sorrow, and faint in soul with grief; his bitterness may be like gall, but he must do his work and yet it is this stormy vicissitude to which he is exposed, that keeps his feelings fresh, untainted, and impatient of the calculating sordid stagnation of civil life. War is the off.

spring of wickedness, but it is the parent of generosity, and of high though tumultuous emotions. Stifling his sorrow, Guillelmo cast but one look towards the distant point where Val Das Iras was situated, and then gazed with melancholy thoughts upon the vultures who were congregating over the recent field of battle, till he half believed that one more huge than the rest, and soaring alone, was not only the same he had seen on the Estrella, but that it was Griffone himself, satisfying his wrath by watching the gradual fulfilment of his malediction in the dream.

All that night and the next day the hostile armies remained tranquil, and nothing seemed to have been changed on the enemy's position in front; but in the evening the glittering of arms far in the west attracted attention, and soon a long, dark column of men was discovered winding along the sides of the distant mountains to the left. The French general had gained an important march, the head of his army was already in the low ground between the allies and the sea, and twenty-four hours more might place him between them and Lisbon !

Scarcely had this state of affairs been discovered from the small plain in front of the convent of Busaco, when Wellington, who had heard something of the enemy's movements and object, came up at a gallop. Hastily he dismounted, hastily he turned his anxious and piercing looks towards the west, steadfastly regarding, for some moments, the long line of French troops then coiling like a huge black shining snake around those very hills which he had hoped to make an impassable barrier to Massena's progress. His eyes visibly enlarged as he gazed, his brow wrinkled, his complexion grew paler than usual. Suddenly turning on his heel, he picked up several pieces of heath, and biting them with a quick unconscious motion, walked hastily up and down, exhibiting a striking picture of mortification, in which, however, there was nothing mean or insignificant; for his countenance was so stern and menacing, that none dared to approach him, and there was a general stillness around. In a few minutes he remounted his horse without uttering a word, and rode away. Half an hour after, sixty

thousand men and a hundred pieces of artillery were in march along the rugged sides of the Sierra de Busaco.

All that night the allied troops were moving incessantly through the narrow defiles, down the sides of the Sierra, into the low ground on the left, and by twelve o'clock on the 30th, the army was once more in order of battle between Massena and Coimbra. But the French general was now in a country where his powerful cavalry could act, and the allies, unable to give him battle on the open ground, retired behind the defiles of Condeixa, thus abandoning the line of the Mondego and the city of Coimbra.

Alas, alas! to what dreadful scenes this movement gave birth. Famine, and terror, and the sword were abroad, and all the horrors that bodily suffering and mental misery can produce, were rife. The people of Coimbra, influenced at once by their fear of the enemy and the harsh orders of their own government, poured forth in crowds. There were to be seen all ages, and both sexes; the old man and his nurse, the maniac and his keeper; the bed-ridden creature and the unweaned infant; the pale despairing lady and the boisterous ruffian; all mingled together, without help, without control, shrieking and striving, according to their strength or madness, to force their way along with the retreating soldiers. But these last, grim with the smoke of powder, and alarmed at their own dangerous position, were furiously endeavouring to shake off the increasing crowds, and keep themselves free to fight the enemy, whose cavalry, hovering on all sides, were fording the river and already skirmishing with the allied horsemen at the distance of pistol shot. In this terrible confusion, the mob of soldiers and fugitives bursting together through the close, rocky defiles of Condeixa, poured into the open country beyond. Fortunately the French, by delaying some days in Coimbra, gave time for the miserable people to separate from the troops, and make their way by the different lateral routes, with somewhat less of haste and distress, either to Lisbon or to different asylums distant from the scene of hostilities. In a few days, however, the enemy again pushed forwards, and daily and nightly combats took place between their advanced guards and the rear of the allies, the latter retiring slowly towards the celebrated lines of Torres Vedras.

It was during this second period of the retreat that Don Guillelmo was one evening directed to halt and form a picquet near some old houses at the edge of a wild moor near Alemquer. The first part of the wet season had now set in, and the rain was coming down, not in torrents, but in water-spouts, from a dark, heavy, low, hanging, gloomy cloud, which, like a huge pall, covered the earth. The soldiers, standing carelessly in groups, blocked up the high road; a cavalry skirmish. was going on in front; French prisoners, mixed with English dragoons,

rear.

all gashed with sabre-cuts and drenched in blood, were passing to the The officer, not in the happiest mood, and shocked by the appearance of the poor wounded men, had turned from them, and leaning on his sword was gazing unconsciously on the cloud above, when suddenly stooping from the midst of its dark volume, a large vulture came sailing downwards, and hovering for a moment close over his head, uttered its shrill cry and passed on. The Val Das Iras and all its associations rushed upon his mind, and with a start he muttered to himself" Griffoné!" the next instant a low musical voice, close behind him, murmured "Guillelmo!" His heart leaped at the sound, he turned hastily, but only beheld, what appeared to him, an old woman mounted on a mule and closely muffled in a coarse country cloak. His eyes wandered rapidly over this strange figure and then drooped, a sickening feeling of disappointment came over him, and he was going to turn away, when the same sweet musical voice again, and with a more tender accent, murmured "Guillelmo, are you offended with me?" at the same moment the hood of the seeming old woman's cloak was half opened, and disclosed the lovely face of Angela, somewhat pale and sorrowful, indeed, but more beautiful than ever.

He would have sprung forward to embrace her, but before his surprise gave him the power, Angela's looks plainly said, " beware!" and her finger pointed towards a large, raw-boned, ferocious-looking man, in a brown cloak, having a long heavy gun in one hand, a rope leading from her mule's head-gear in the other, and a huge knife stuck in his girdle. He was, however, too intent upon watching the wounded men who were passing, to be aware of the recognition which was taking place behind him; and the officer, being thus warned of his importance, changed his manner, and with a loud voice and military salute, touching his schako, thus addressed the lady.

"Senhora, is there anything that I or my men can do to serve you?"

Her surly guardian turned sharply round at these words; but seeing that it was the commander of the troops who spoke, and that his manner and address were grave and courteous, took no further notice, but continued to gaze on the passing wounded prisoners with a ferocious delight, at times muttering curses on them, and giving vent to his national hatred by abusive words.

Having lulled the vigilance of the peasant in this manner, Guillelmo, approaching close to Angela, eagerly asked her how she came there? where she was going? what had passed since he left her in the lovely valley?

"Ah! Guillelmo, the story is long, and the subject painful, but I am going to my friends in Lisbon ;" then, with a deep sigh, she looked timidly towards her rough guardian.