CHAPTER XXXVIII.
THE LEAVE.
After an hour's sharp riding we reached the Aguada, where the river was yet fordable; crossing this, we mounted the Sierra by a narrow and winding pass which leads through the mountains towards Almeida.

Here I turned once more to cast a last and farewell look at the scene of our late encounter.

It was but a few hours that I had stood almost on the same spot, and yet how altered was all around.

The wide plain, then bustling with all the life and animation of a large army, was now nearly deserted,--some dismounted guns, some broken-up, dismantled batteries, around which a few sentinels seemed to loiter rather than to keep guard; a strong detachment of infantry could be seen wending their way towards the fortress, and a confused mass of camp-followers, sutlers, and peasants following their steps for protection against the pillagers and the still ruder assaults of their own Guerillas.
The fortress, too, was changed indeed.

Those mighty walls before whose steep sides the bravest fell back baffled and beaten, were now a mass of ruin and decay; the muleteer could be seen driving his mule along through the rugged ascent of that breach to win whose top the best blood of Albion's chivalry was shed; and the peasant child looked timidly from those dark enclosures in the deep fosse below, where perished hundreds of our best and bravest.