Everywhere was life and bustle.  Men were cleaning their arms, preparatory to the march of next day.  Others were cooking at the fires.  Troopers were grooming their horses.  Snatches of song, and loud laughter, rose in the air.

After wandering about for an hour, Walter rejoined his father.  Captain Davenant was sitting with the two officers of his troop, Lieutenant O’Driscoll and Cornet Heron, by a fire, the materials for which the three troopers who acted as their servants had collected.  There was no cooking to be done, for sufficient cold provisions had been brought with the troop.

“You are just in time, Walter,” his father said.  “We are going to fall to, at once, at our meal.

“Hand over that cold chicken, Larry; and do you, Tim Donelly, broach that keg of claret.  Give me the bread, Fergus—­that’s right.

“Now, gentlemen, here’s a hunk each.  Plates are a luxury which we must do without, in the field.  Now let us fall to.”

Walter seated himself on a truss of straw beside his father, and thought he had never enjoyed a meal so much, in his life, as the bread and cold chicken, eaten as they were in the open air in front of the crackling fire.  Each was provided with a horn, and these were filled from the keg.

“Here’s to the king, gentlemen.  Success to his arms!”

All stood up to drink the toast, and then continued their meal.  Three chickens vanished rapidly, and the troopers kept their horns filled with claret.

“If we always do as well as that,” Captain Davenant said, as they finished the meal, “we shall have no reason to grumble.  But I fear that’s too much to expect.

“Bring me my pipe and tobacco, Larry.  You will find them in the holsters of my saddle.

“Fergus, do you undo these trusses, and lay the straw out even—­that will do.

“Now, lads, you will find plenty more provisions in the wallet.  Do you go and get your own suppers, then give an eye to the horses.  We shall not want anything more.”

For two or three hours, the three officers and Walter sat chatting by the fire, occasionally piling on fresh logs.  Gradually the din of voices in the camp died away, and the bright fires burned down.

“I think we had better turn in,” Captain Davenant said at last.  “We must be astir an hour before daylight, for we march as soon as it’s light.”

Rolling themselves in their long cloaks, they lay down upon the straw.  It was some time before Walter got to sleep.  The novelty of the situation, and the strangeness of lying with the night air blowing in his face, made him unusually wakeful.  Occasionally, too, a laugh, from some party who were sitting late round their fire, attracted his attention, and the sound of the snorting and pawing of the horses also kept him awake; but at last he, too, went off to sleep.

In spite of his warm cloak, he felt stiff and chilled when the sound of the trumpets and drums roused the camp.