It was one of those night skirmishes or surprises that brought me
promotion. For on the evening of December 10th our troop, being
ordered out to beat up the neighbourhood of Odiham, on the way fell
in with a half-squadron of the Lord Crawford's cuirassiers, and in
the loose pistol-firing we took five prisoners and lost our cornet,
Master John Ingoldby. The next day we rested; and that morning, as I
sat on a rusty harrow by the forge close beside Farnham Church and
watched the farrier roughing my horse, our Sergeant-Major Le Gaye, a
Walloon, came up to me and desired me to attend on Colonel Stuckey,
who presently and with many kind expressions told me that I was
chosen to fill the room of the dead cornet.

Now this was flattering: and you may think with what elation of mind
I took it, being eager and young (in fact, scarce turned twenty).
But almost it jumped beyond my ambitions at the time. I was one of
five sergeants of the troop, the unripest among them and already
accounted lucky. I knew well that this advancement had passed them
and reached me less for my deserving than because our colonel
preferred to have his commands carried by men of decent birth.
I knew the whole army to be sore already over fifty like promotions,
and foresaw grumbling.

'I bear ye no malice'--this was the way that Roger Inch took it, our
senior sergeant. 'But you'll allow 'tis disheartening to be set
aside for a lawyer-fellow that, a year ago, had never groomed
horse-hair but on his own wig.' And so--but less kindly--the rest of
my fellow-sergeants expressed themselves.

None the less they were ready enough, that evening, to join in