Within and along the sea-wall San Sebastian was a heap of burnt-out ruins.  Amid the stones and rubble encumbering the streets, lay broken muskets, wrenched doors, shattered sticks of furniture—­ mirrors, hangings, women’s apparel, children’s clothes—­loot dropped by the pillagers as valueless, wreckage of the flood.  He passed a very few inhabitants, and these said nothing to him; indeed, did not appear to see him, but sat by the ruins of their houses with faces set in a stupid horror.  Even the crash of a falling house near by would scarcely persuade them to stir, and hundreds during the last three days had been overwhelmed thus and buried.

The sergeant had grown callous to these sights.  He walked on, heeding scarcely more than he was heeded, came to the great square, and climbed a street leading northwards, a little to the left of the great convent.  The street was a narrow one, for half its length lined on both sides with fire-gutted houses; but the upper half, though deserted, appeared to be almost intact.  At the very head, and close under the citadel walls, it took a sharp twist to the right, and another twist, almost equally sharp, to the left before it ended in a broader thoroughfare, crossing it at right angles and running parallel with the ramparts.

At the second twist the sergeant came to a halt; for at his feet, stretched across the causeway, lay a dead body.

He drew back with a start, and looked about him.  Corporal Sam had been missing since nine o’clock last night, and he felt sure that Corporal Sam must be here or hereabouts.  But no living soul was in sight.

The body at his feet was that of a rifleman; one of the volunteers whose presence had been so unwelcome to General Leith and the whole Fifth Division.  The dead fist clutched its rifle; and the sergeant stooping to disengage this, felt that the body was warm.

‘Come back, you silly fool!’

He turned quickly.  Another rifleman had thrust his head out of a doorway close by.  The sergeant, snatching up the weapon, sprang and joined him in the passage where he sheltered.

‘I—­I was looking for a friend hereabouts.’

‘Fat lot of friend you’ll find at the head of this street!’ snarled the rifleman, and jerked his thumb towards the corpse.  ’That makes the third already this morning.  These Johnnies ain’t no sense of honour left—­firing on outposts as you may call it.’

‘Where are they firing from?’

’No “they” about it.  You saw that cottage—­or didn’t you?—­right above there, under the wall; the place with one window in it?  There’s a devil behind it somewheres; he fires from the back of the room, and what’s more, he never misses his man.  You have Nick’s own luck—­the pretty target you made, too; that is unless, like some that call themselves Englishmen and ought to know better, he’s a special spite on the Rifles.’

The sergeant paid no heed to the sneer.  He was beginning to think.