I'd suggest to take a side trip to a Home Depot, a Sears store, or anywhere else they sell inexpensive meters and buy one. First thing to check would be the voltage of the batteries. Without knowing the state of the batteries, you will get a thousand ideas on what went wrong and most of them will be incorrect.
If you've never used a meter, it's simple. Set the meter's selector to DC voltage, place one probe on the battery's positive post and the other probe on the negative post. Report back with findings.