The next fortnight was spent in a round of fêtes, bull fights, and balls, succeeding each other rapidly, but these rejoicings were but a thin veil over the distress which was general throughout the town. The people were starving, and many deaths occurred daily from hunger. The British could do but little to relieve the suffering which they saw around them, for they themselves were—owing to the utter breakdown of all the arrangements undertaken by the Portuguese government, and to the indecision and incapacity of the Home Government—badly fed, and much in arrears of their pay. Nevertheless, the officers did what they could, got up soup kitchens, and fed daily many hundreds of starving wretches.
The heat was excessive and a very great deal of illness took place among the troops. The French were gathering strength in the South, and Wellington determined upon marching north and seizing Burgos, an important place, but poorly fortified. Leaving General Hill with two divisions at Madrid, he marched with the rest of the army upon Burgos.
CHAPTER XVII. — CAUGHT IN A TRAP.
So much had passed between the first visit of the Scudamores to Madrid as Spanish peasant boys, and their second entry as captains upon Lord Wellington's staff, that they had scarcely given a thought to the dangers they had at that time run, or to the deadly hatred with which they had inspired the guerilla chief Nunez. When they first rode into the town, indeed, they had spoken of it one to the other, and had agreed that it would be pleasant to be able to walk through the streets without fear of assassination; for even, as Tom said, if the scoundrel had any of his band there, they would not be likely to recognize them in their uniforms.
One evening, however, when they had been in Madrid about a fortnight, an incident happened which caused them to doubt whether their security from the hatred of the guerilla was as complete as they had fancied. They were sitting with a number of other officers in a large café in the Puerta del Sol, the principal square in Madrid, when a girl came round begging; instead of holding out her hand silently with a murmur for charity in the name of the holy Virgin, she began a long story, poured out in rapid language.
Several of the officers present knew more or less Spanish, but they were unable to follow her quick utterances, and one of them said laughingly, "Scudamore, this is a case for you, she is beyond us altogether."
The girl followed the direction of the speaker's eye, and moved across to the brothers, who happened to be sitting next to each other, and began her story again. It was a complicated tale of French oppression, and the boys, interrupting her here and there to ask for details, talked with her for some minutes.
"I believe she is lying," Tom said, in English, "she tells her story as if she had learned it by heart, and gets confused whenever we cross-question her; there, give her a few coppers, I am out of change."