o look no more towards Newenham; but to go on by the Duke's side to
whatever fortune the wars might bring us. Somehow, the feeling that my
father was by me, made me sure that we were marching to victory. I went
to my quarters comforted, sure of sleeping contentedly.

Like the rest of us, I had to sleep in the open, without any more
shelter than a horse-cloth. Even the Duke was without a tent that night.
He slept in camp with us, to set an example to his men, though he might
well have gone to some house in the town. I liked the notion of sleeping
out in the open. In fine warm summer weather, when the dew is not too
heavy, it is pleasant, until a little before the dawn, when one feels
uneasy, for some reason, as though an enemy were coming. Perhaps our
savage ancestors, the earliest ancient Britons, who lived in hill-camps,
high up, with their cattle round them, expected the attacks of their
enemies always at a little before the dawn; so that, in time, the
entire race learned to be wakeful then, lest the enemy should catch the
slumberers, with flint-axe heads in the skull. It may be that to this
day we feel the fear felt by so many generations of our ancestors. On
this first night in camp, I found that many of the men were sleeping
uneasily, for they did not know the secret of sleeping in the open. They
did not know that to sleep comfortably in the open one must dig a little
hole in the ground, about as big as a porridge bowl, to receive one's
hipbone. If you do this, you sleep at ease, feeling nothing of the
hardness of the bed. If you fail to do it, you wake all bruised, after a
wretched night's tumbling; you ache all the next day.

After grubbing up a hollow with my knife, I swathed myself in my blanket
with a saddle for pillow. I watched the stars for a while, as they
drifted slowly over me. The horses stamped, shaking their picket-ropes.
The sentries walked their rounds, or came to the camp-fires to call
their reliefs. The night was full of strange noises. The presence of so
many sleeping men was strange. It was very beautiful, very solemn. It
gave one a kind of awe to think that thus so many famous armies had
slept before the battles of the world, before Pharsalia, before Chalons,
before Hastings. Presently the murmuring became so slight that I fell
asleep, forgetting everything, only turning uneasily from time to time,
to keep the cool night wind from blowing on my cheeks so as to wake me.

It must have been two i