ten days' voyage in a heavy
sea, with occasional rain-showers, is not, under ordinary
circumstances, calculated to raise the spirits of troops. But men
bound on active and dangerous service are always in the highest
spirits, and make light of disagreeables and hardships of all kinds.

They had expected to find Ostend full of troops, for several regiments
had landed before them; but they soon found they were to be marched
inland. As soon as the regiment had landed they marched to a spot
where a standing camp had been erected for the use of troops on their
passage through. Their baggage was at once sent forward, and the men
had therefore nothing to do but to clean up their arms and
accoutrements, and to wander as they pleased through the town. They
started early next morning, and after two days' marching arrived at
Ghent, where several regiments were quartered, either in the town
itself or in the villages round it. Ralph's company had billets
allotted to them in a village a mile from the town, a cottage being
placed at the disposal of the captain and his two subalterns. The next
morning, after the parade of the regiment was over, most of the
officers and many of the men paid a visit to the town, where the
fugitive King of France had now established his court.

Ralph, who years before had read the history of Ghent, was greatly
interested in the quaint old town; though it was difficult to imagine
from the appearance of its quiet streets that its inhabitants had once
been the most turbulent in Europe. Here Von Artevelde was killed, and
the streets often ran with the blood of contending factions. Was it
possible that the fathers of these quiet workmen in blouses, armed
with axes and pikes, had defeated the chivalry of France, and all but
annihilated the force of the Duke of Anjou? What a number of convents
there were! The monks seemed a full third of the population, and it
was curious to hear everyone talking in French when the French were
the enemy they were going to meet. The populace were quite as
interested in their English visitors as the latter were with them. The
English scarlet was altogether strange to them, and the dress of the
men of the Highland regiment, who were encamped next to the
Twenty-eighth, filled them with astonishment.

For a fortnight the regiment remained at Ghent, then they with some
others of the same division marched to Brussels, and took up their
quarters in villages round the town. The Twenty-