Ranald Dhu and his six pipers blowing the gathering, in concert with the drums of other corps beating the 'assembly,' in the Plaza, soon followed, and he left the house of the hospitable but superstitious potter, who would not accept a single maravedi for the entertainment he had given,—a circumstance which Ronald did not regret, his pecuniary affairs not being then in a very flourishing condition, as the troops were three months pay in arrear.
When the second division approached Almendralejo, they found that it had been abandoned by the enemy in the night. As on the march of the preceding day, the troops suffered greatly by thirst and the intense heat of the weather; and as the regiments passed through in succession, the inhabitants were employed for hours handing water through their barred windows[*] to the soldiers, while crowds in the streets were kept running to and fro from the fountains with all sorts of vessels, as if a general conflagration had taken place.
[*] The lower windows in Spain are all barred.
"Viva Ferdinando! muera Napoleon!" cried a soft voice from the balcony of a house near, the Casa de Ayuntamiento, the tall spire of which is visible for leagues around.
"Who can that handsome girl be,—she with the tight boddice and braided hair?" asked Stuart of Alister, as the corps halted, for the usual rest of five minutes, in front of the town-house.
"Handsome girl! How should I know, Ronald. Where?"
"Leaning over the antique stone balcony: she has tossed a chaplet among the men at the other flank of the company."
"And one fellow has placed it on the point of his bayonet. That is the Senora Maria I told you of."
"What! the daughter of the abogado?"
"The same. I used to meet her often at the Prado and at church, when we lay here. Her true knight, Angus Mackie, has obtained the wreath, I perceive."