their way or getting off the track,
checked by muddy fords, where an engulfed team wallows piteously,
barring the passage. We pass detachments of infantry hurrying in tired
and silent, and meet other detachments with blankets and greatcoats
coming out on picket. Waifs and strays, by ones and twos, who have lost
their way, shout for guidance, hallooing dismally for the brigades or
regiments to which they belong, and which many have small hope of
rejoining that night. Meantime, right down the valley and far across it,
the various camp-fires twinkle out like glow-worms. The air is keen and
frosty, and stars, clear and sharp as icicles, glitter all over the sky.
Above everything is still and calm, very well arranged evidently, and
everything in its proper place. Below all is confusion, noise, and
darkness, disappointment, and difficulty, vague wandering to and fro,
lamentations, and general chaos. They manage these things better up
there! However, after a bit order begins to reign. The several units
draw together. The camp-fires are beacons. The waggons struggle up. The
bleating of the lost sheep is gradually hushed, as one by one they find
their way to their various folds, and slowly, in spite of darkness and
broken ground, the tangle is smoothed out.

By a small farm, where the General lodges, blazes a huge fire. Round it
gather some staff officers, and among them, recognised from afar, are
the welcome tiger-skins of the Guides' officers. The Major sits by the
blaze in that familiar attitude of his, like a witch in "Macbeth," with
a wolf-skin karross drawn over his shoulders, and the firelight on his
swarthy face as he turns it up with a grim laugh to chaff the others
standing round. But there is rather a gloom on the party to-night. News
has just come in that poor Airlie, charging at the head of his Lancers,
has been killed. Many here knew him, and every one who knew him seems to
have been fond of him.

Winston Churchill turns up and enlivens us. There are several colonels
and senior officers squatting about, and Churchill takes the opportunity
of giving them a bit of his mind. He is much annoyed with the day's
proceedings. He has been a good deal shot at; so has the Duke, and so
has the General. They have had to use their Mauser pistols. This sort of
thing should not happen. Then where was French? Checked, indeed! a
pretty fine thing! And the Guards? The Guards were somewhere where they
had no business to be, instead o