charitable construction I can put on your behaviour is to believe you
mad. For the present you, too, are free to go and do your duty. Now
leave me. Business presses, and I am sick and angry at the sight of
you."

It was just two in the morning when I reached the alarm-post. Brussels
by this time was full of the rolling of drums and screaming of pipes;
and the regiment formed up in darkness rendered tenfold more confusing
by a mob of citizens, some wildly excited, others paralysed by terror,
and all intractable. We had, moreover, no small trouble to disengage
from our ranks the wives and families who had most unwisely followed
many officers abroad, and now clung to their dear ones bidding them
farewell. To end this most distressing scene I had in some instances
to use a roughness which it still afflicts me to remember. Yet in
actual time it was soon overhand dawn scarcely breaking when the
Morays with the other regiments of Pack's brigade filed out of the
park and fell into stride on the road which leads southward to
Charleroi.

In this record it would be immaterial to describe either our march or
the since-famous engagement which terminated it. Very early we began
to hear the sound of heavy guns far ahead and to make guesses at their
distance; but it was close upon two in the afternoon before we reached
the high ground above Quatre Bras, and saw the battle spread below
us like a picture. The Prince of Orange had been fighting his ground
stubbornly since seven in the morning. Ney's superior artillery and
far superior cavalry had forced him back, it is true; but he still
covered the cross-roads which were the key of his defence, and his
position remained sound, though it was fast becoming critical. Just as
we arrived, the French, who had already mastered the farm of Piermont,