t cleared, so Reuben and I rode
slowly up one of the sloping green hills which rose behind the camp, in
the hope of gaining some sight of the enemy. Our men we left littered
about upon the grass, trying to light fires with the damp sticks, or
laying out their clothes to dry in the sunshine. A strange-looking band
they were, coated and splashed with mud from head to heel, their hats
all limp and draggled, their arms rusted, and their boots so worn that
many walked barefoot, and others had swathed their kerchiefs round
their feet. Yet their short spell of soldiering had changed them
from honest-faced yokels into fierce-eyed, half-shaven, gaunt-cheeked
fellows, who could carry arms or port pikes as though they had done
nought else since childhood.

The plight of the officers was no better than that of the men, nor
should an officer, my dears, when he is upon service, ever demean
himself by partaking of any comfort which all cannot share with him. Let
him lie by a soldier's fire and eat a soldier's fare, or let him hence,
for he is a hindrance and a stumbling-block. Our clothes were pulp, our
steel fronts red with rust, and our chargers as stained and splashed as
though they had rolled in the mire. Our very swords and pistols were in
such a plight that we could scarce draw the one or snap the other. Sir
Gervas alone succeeded in keeping his attire and his person as neat and
as dainty as ever. What he did in the watches of the night, and how he
gained his sleep, hath ever been a mystery to me, for day after day
he turned out at the bugle call, washed, scented, brushed, with wig
in order, and clothes from which every speck of mud had been carefully
removed. At his saddle-bow he bore with him the great flour dredger
which we saw him use at Taunton, and his honest musqueteers had their
heads duly dusted every morning, though in an hour their tails would
be as brown as nature made them, while the flour would be trickling in
little milky streams down their broad backs, or forming in cakes upon
the skirts of their coats. It was a long contest between the weather and
the Baronet, but our comrade proved the victor.

'There was a time when I was called plump Reuben,' quoth my friend, as
we rode together up the winding track. 'What with too little that is
solid and too much that is liquid I am like to be skeleton Reuben ere I
see Havant again. I am as full of rain-water as my father's casks are of
October. I would, Micah, that you wo