roads, it wouldn't
be too much for these here Flemingers--yon road's not wide enough for
them, you see. Look, here's a regiment o' them coming back!"

"Ah! poor fellows--we might be in the same situation," observed Gray;
"remember that their force is not strong in comparison with the French, by
the accounts that have been received; better to fall back at the first of
a fight than at the last."

"I say, Jack," said another, with his mouth full of biscuit, "did you ever
meet with such a devil of a roadster as the _carpolar_ there with the
glazed cocked hat?"

"Who do you mean?" said Jack.

"Why the dook, to be sure--how he _did_ give it us on the long road
through the forest."

"Ay--he's the lad; well, here's God bless his jolly old glazed hat any
way," cried the trooper, swallowing a horn of grog; "he's the boy what has
come from the Peninsula just to gi' 'em a leaf out of his book. He was a
dancing last night--riding like a devil all the morning--and I'll warrant
he'll be fighting all the afternoon by way of refreshing himself."

"He look'd serious enough this morning though, Master Tom, as he was
turning out."

"Serious! and so did you; hasn't he enough to make him look serious? Bony,
and all the flower of the French before him. I like to see him look
serious; he's just a thinking a bit, that's all. Look, look, look! where
he is now pelting away up the hill there. My eye! but he's a rum on'."

"Ay, just as he was in the ould ground," cried an Hibernian. "'Pon my
sowl, I think I'm in Spain agin. There he is, success to him!--an' the
smell o' the powther too so natural."

"The light troops are pushing on towards that wood," said Gray, fixing his
eyes on a particular spot.

"Sure enough they are. Ah! we'll soon have the boys up who will set them
off with a flea in their ear."

"Look--on the rising ground there, about half a mile away, how they are
moving about--that is a train of artillery--see the guns--there is a
regiment of infantry going to the left--do you see their bayonets? A fine
open place here for a battle."

"Not so good as that which we passed--the plain fields we crossed
immediately after we left the forest of Soignes," said Gray: "however,
that little wood on our right, in front, which runs along the road, is a
good flank, and the village before us is a strong point."

"Ay, but you see the Belgian troops couldn't keep it; the French have
pushed them out of it."

"We'll soon have it again, I