all is over except the butchery.

Troop after troop turned from the troughs and ran--anywhere, and
everywhere--like spit quicksilver. It was a most extraordinary
spectacle, for men and horses were in all stages of easiness, and the
carbine-buckets flopping against their sides urged the horses on. Men
were shouting and cursing, and trying to pull clear of the Band which
was being chased by the Drum-Horse whose rider had fallen forward and
seemed to be spurring for a wager.

The Colonel had gone over to the Mess for a drink. Most of the officers
were with him, and the Subaltern of the Day was preparing to go down
to the lines, and receive the watering reports from the Troop-Sergeant
Majors. When "Take me to London again" stopped, after twenty bars, every
one in the Mess said:--"What on earth has happened?" A minute later,
they heard unmilitary noises, and saw, far across the plain, the White
Hussars scattered, and broken, and flying.

The Colonel was speechless with rage, for he thought that the Regiment
had risen against him or was unanimously drunk. The Band, a disorganized
mob, tore past, and at it's heels labored the Drum-Horse--the dead and
buried Drum-Horse--with the jolting, clattering skeleton. Hogan-Yale
whispered softly to Martyn:--"No wire will stand that treatment," and
the Band, which had doubled like a hare, came back again. But the rest
of the Regiment was gone, was rioting all over the Province, for the
dusk had shut in and each man was howling to his neighbor that the
Drum-Horse was on his flank. Troop-Horses are far too tenderly treated
as a rule. They can, on emergencies, do a great deal, even with
seventeen stone on their backs. As the troopers found out.

How long this panic lasted I cannot say. I believe that when the moon
rose the men saw they had nothing to fear, and, by twos and threes
and half-troops, crept back into Cantonments very much ashamed of
themselves. Meantime, the Drum-Horse, disgusted at his treatment by
old friends, pulled up, wheeled round, and trotted up to the Mess
verandah-steps for bread. No one liked to run; but no one cared to go
forward till the Colonel made a movement and laid hold of the skeleton's
foot. The Band had halted some distance away, and now came back slowly.
The Colonel called it, individually and collectively, every evil name
that occurred to him at the time; for he had set his hand on the
bosom of the Drum-Horse and found flesh and blood. Then he beat the
k