As he had no idea of putting on the French uniform even for a day, Rupert resolved as he approached the army frontier to abandon his story that he was a soldier going to take his place in the ranks.

When he reached Amiens he found the streets encumbered with baggage waggons taking up provisions and stores to the army.  The drivers had all been pressed into the service.  Going into a cabaret, he heard some young fellow lamenting bitterly that he had been dragged away from home when he was in three weeks to have been married.  Waiting until he left, Rupert followed him, and told him that he had heard what he had said and was ready to go as his substitute, if he liked.  For a minute or two the poor fellow could hardly believe his good fortune; but when he found that he was in earnest he was delighted, and hurried off to the contractor in charge of the train—­Rupert stopping with him by the way to buy a blouse, in which he looked more fitted for the post.

The contractor, seeing that Rupert was a far more powerful and useful-looking man than the driver whose place he offered to take, made no difficulty whatever; and in five minutes Rupert, with a metal plate with his number hung round his neck, was walking by the side of a heavily-loaded team, while their late driver, with his papers of discharge in his pocket, had started for home almost wild with delight.

For a month Rupert worked backwards and forwards, between the posts and the depots.  As yet the allies had not taken the field, and he knew that he should have no chance of crossing a wide belt of country patrolled in every direction by the French cavalry.  At the end of that time the infantry moved out from their quarters and took the field, and the allied army advanced towards them.  The French army, under Vendome, numbered 100,000 men, while Marlborough, owing to the intrigues of his enemies at home, and the dissensions of the allies, was able to bring only 70,000 into the field.

The French had correspondents in most of the towns in Flanders, where the rapacity of the Dutch had exasperated the people against their new masters, and made them long for the return of the French.

A plot was on foot to deliver Antwerp to the French, and Vendome moved forward to take advantage of it; but Marlborough took post at Halle, and Vendome halted his army at Soignies, three leagues distant.  Considerable portions of each force moved much closer to each other, and lay watching each other across a valley but a mile wide.

Rupert happened to be with the waggons taking ammunition up to the artillery in an advanced position, and determined, if possible, to seize the opportunity of rejoining his countrymen.  A lane running between two high hedges led from the foot of the hill where he was standing, directly across the valley, and Rupert slipping away unnoticed, made the best of his way down the lane.  When nearly half across the valley, the hedges ceased, and Rupert issued out into open fields.