our army arranging itself and settling down for the night.  We picked our way through the various convoys hurrying forward in search of their brigades, but often losing 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 of being somewhere else.  Would any one kindly tell him why the Guards were not somewhere else?  And Churchill (he has a face like a good-natured child, and looks about fourteen) eyes the old colonels, who fidget nervously round the fire like disturbed hens.  He talks and argues incessantly, but very cleverly.  Before he goes