"Hullo, Reynell!" says the general. "This begins to look like business.
What do you make of it?"

They both cantered their horses forward, and Adams tore open the
dispatch which the messenger handed to him. The wrapper had not touched
the ground before he turned, waving the letter over his head as if it
had been a sabre.

"Dismiss!" he cried. "General parade and march in half-an-hour."

Then in an instant all was buzz and bustle, and the news on every lip.
Napoleon had crossed the frontier the day before, had pushed the
Prussians before him, and was already deep in the country to the east of
us with a hundred and fifty thousand men. Away we scuttled to gather
our things together and have our breakfast, and in an hour we had
marched off and left Ath and the Dender behind us for ever. There was
good need for haste, for the Prussians had sent no news to Wellington of
what was doing, and though he had rushed from Brussels at the first
whisper of it, like a good old mastiff from its kennel, it was hard to
see how he could come up in time to help the Prussians.

It was a bright warm morning, and as the brigade tramped down the broad
Belgian road the dust rolled up from it like the smoke of a battery.
I tell you that we blessed the man that planted the poplars along the
sides, for their shadow was better than drink to us. Over across the
fields, both to the right and the left, were other roads, one quite
close, and the other a mile or more from us. A column of infantry was
marching down the near one, and it was a fair race between us, for we
were each walking for all we were worth. There was such a wreath of
dust round them that we could only see the gun-barrels and the bearskins