off at last. It seems an old stale story to you now, but you cannot
think how we scrambled round those two men in the barn, and pushed and
fought, just to catch a word of what they said, and how those who had
heard were in turn mobbed by those who had not. We laughed and cheered
and groaned all in turn as we heard how the 44th had received cavalry in
line, how the Dutch-Belgians had fled, and how the Black Watch had taken
the Lancers into their square, and then had killed them at their
leisure. But the Lancers had had the laugh on their side when they
crumpled up the 69th and carried off one of the colours. To wind it all
up, the Duke was in retreat in order to keep in touch with the
Prussians, and it was rumoured that he would take up his ground and
fight a big battle just at the very place where we had been halted.

And soon we saw that this rumour was true; for the weather cleared
towards evening, and we were all out on the ridge to see what we could
see. It was such a bonny stretch of corn and grazing land, with the
crops just half green and half yellow, and fine rye as high as a man's
shoulder. A scene more full of peace you could not think of, and look
where you would over the low curving corn-covered hills, you could see
the little village steeples pricking up their spires among the poplars.
But slashed right across this pretty picture was a long trail of
marching men--some red, some green, some blue, some black--zigzagging
over the plain and choking the roads, one end so close that we could
shout to them, as they stacked their muskets on the ridge at our left,
and the other end lost among the woods as far as we could see. And then
on other roads we saw the teams of horses toiling and the dull gleam of
the guns, and the men straining and swaying as they helped to turn the
spokes in the deep, deep mud. As we stood there, regiment after
regiment and brigade after brigade took position on the ridge, and ere
the sun had set we lay in a line of over sixty thousand men, blocking