hink, to know what it all meant, but
we knew that what the Duke did would be for the best, so we just waited
in patience.

Next day the brigade remained at Hal in the morning, but about mid-day
came an orderly from the Duke, and we pushed on once more until we came
to a little village called Braine something, and there we stopped; and
time too, for a sudden thunderstorm broke over us, and a plump of rain
that turned all the roads and the fields into bog and mire. We got into
the barns at this village for shelter, and there we found two
stragglers--one from a kilted regiment, and the other a man of the
German Legion, who had a tale to tell that was as dreary as the weather.

Boney had thrashed the Prussians the day before, and our fellows had
been sore put to it to hold their own against Ney, but had beaten him
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 wood