tallow-candles stuck on a
cocoa tin, and the fact that none of the officers had shaved, or had had
their clothes off for a week, and had walked some forty-five miles
through rivers and mud, and you will have some idea of how the officers'
mess of one of the smartest of Her Majesty's foot regiments do for
themselves in time of war. Not a murmur or complaint was to be heard."

Their state must certainly have been pitiable, for it will be remembered
that on the retirement from Dundee rations for four days only were
loaded, and provisions for two months, besides all officers' and men's
kit and hospital equipment, were left behind.

And, sad to say, so also were the wounded. It was necessary for their
future well-being to desert them. The men who had so gloriously led to
victory now found themselves stranded and in a strange position--the
vanquishers at the mercy of the vanquished! Most melancholy of all must
have been the plight of those unhappy sufferers when they first learnt
that their comrades were marching farther and farther away, and that
they, in all their helplessness, must be left lonely--unloved, and
perhaps untended--in charge of the enemy. One dares not think of the
agonies of those sad souls--the nation's invalids--bereft of kindly
words and kindred smiles; one cannot linger without a sense of
emasculating weakness on the sad side-picture of battle that, in its
dumb wretchedness, seems so much more paralysing than the active horror
of facing shot and shell in company with glorious comrades in arms. Let
us hope there was some one to whisper to them, to persuade them that all
was for the best; that the safety of their sick selves and their sound
mates depended on this retreat, this wondrous retreat which, when the
tale of the war in its entirety shall be told, will shine like a
dazzling light among records whose brilliancy in the history of British
achievements cannot be excelled. Perhaps, too, they had faith to inspire
them with the certainty that all that they had suffered in that dark
hour for their country and for the weal of their fellows, would be
remembered to their glory in the good times to come.

While the retreat was going forward Glencoe's gallant hero was breathing
his last. After hopelessly lingering for three days, General Sir W. Penn
Symons passed away. He expired in the hands of the enemy at Dundee
hospital on Monday the 23rd of October. The next day he was quietly
buried with profound signs