aight red feather in his hat, and the last
with a low cap.

"By God!" cried the sergeant, "that's him! That's Boney, the one with
the grey horse. Aye, I'll lay a month's pay on it."

I strained my eyes to see him, this man who had cast that great shadow
over Europe, which darkened the nations for five-and-twenty years, and
which had even fallen across our out-of-the-world little sheep-farm, and
had dragged us all--myself, Edie, and Jim--out of the lives that our
folk had lived before us. As far as I could see, he was a dumpy
square-shouldered kind of man, and he held his double glasses to his
eyes with his elbows spread very wide out on each side. I was still
staring when I heard the catch of a man's breath by my side, and there
was Jim with his eyes glowing like two coals, and his face thrust over
my shoulder.

"That's he, Jock," he whispered.

"Yes, that's Boney," said I.

"No, no, it's he. This de Lapp or de Lissac, or whatever his devil's
name is. It is he."

Then I saw him at once. It was the horseman with the high red feather
in his hat. Even at that distance I could have sworn to the slope of
his shoulders and the way he carried his head. I clapped my hands upon
Jim's sleeve, for I could see that his blood was boiling at the sight of
the man, and that he was ready for any madness. But at that moment
Bonaparte seemed to lean over and say something to de Lissac, and the
party wheeled and dashed away, while there came the bang of a gun and a
white spray of smoke from a battery along the ridge. At the same
instant the assembly was blown in our village, and we rushed for our
arms and fell in. There was a burst of firing all along the line, and
we thought that the battle had begun; but it came really from our
fellows cleaning their pieces, for their priming was in some danger of
being wet from the damp night.

From where we stood it was a sight now that was worth coming over the
seas to see. On our own ridge was the chequer of red and blue
stretching right away to a village over two miles from us. It was
whispered from man to man in the ranks, however, that there was too much
of the blue and too little of the red; for the Belgians had shown on the
day before that their hearts were too soft for the work, and we had
twenty thousand of them for comrades. Then, even our British troops
were half made up of militiamen and recruits; for the pick of the old
Peninsular regiments were on the ocean in tra