“Still this is a nice position, isn’t it?  You see there’s room enough along on the top of this slope for our whole army, and our guns will sweep the dip between us and the opposite rise, and if they attack they will have to experience the same sensations we did yesterday, of being pounded and pounded without the satisfaction of being able to return their fire.

“They must cross that dip to get at us—­at least if they attack, which I suppose they will, as they will be the strongest party—­and our artillery will be able to play upon them splendidly from this road.  Then, too, there are two or three farmhouses nearer our side than theirs, and I suppose they will be held in force.

“That looks rather a nice old place among the trees there on our right.  It has a wall and inclosure, and they will have hard work to turn us out of it.  Yes, I call this a fine place for a battle; and we shall have the advantage here of being able to see all over the field and of knowing what is going on in other places, while yesterday one couldn’t see three yards before one.  During the whole time one was fighting, one felt that it might be of no use after all, for we might be getting smashed up in some other part of the field.”

“I never thought anything about it,” Stapleton said.  “My only idea was that I must look as if I wasn’t afraid, and must set a good example to the men, and that it was all very unpleasant, and that probably my turn might come next, and that I would give a good deal for something like a gallon of beer.  As far as I can remember those were my leading ideas yesterday.”

“Well, Denis, what is it?” Ralph asked his servant, who approached with a long face.

“Have you any dry tinder about you, your honor?  I have been trying to strike a light for the last half-hour till the tinder box is full of water, and I have knocked all the skin off my knuckles.”

“That’s bad, Denis; but I don’t think you will get a fire anyhow.  The wood must be all too soaked to burn.”

“I think it will go, sor, if I can once get it to light.  I have pulled up some pea-sticks from an old woman’s garden; and the ould witch came out and began at me as if I was robbing her of her eldest daughter.  It was lucky I had a shilling about me, or be jabbers she would have brought down the provost’s guard upon me, and then maybe I would have had my back warmed the least taste in the world more than was pleasant.  I hid the sticks under a wagon to keep them dry, and Mike Doolan is standing sentry over them.  I promised him a stick or two for his own kindling.  The weather is too bad entirely, your honor, and the boys are well-nigh broken-hearted at turning their backs to the Frenchmen.”

“Ah, well, they will turn their faces to-morrow, Denis; and as for the weather, I guess you have got wet before now digging praties in the old country.”

“I have that, your honor, many and many a time; and it’s little I cared for it.  But then there was a place to go into, and dry clothes to put on, and a warm male to look forward to, with perhaps a drop of the crater afterward; and that makes all the difference in the world.  What we are going to do to-night, sorra of me knows.”