pleasure and surprise, like a row of country
girls out for a holiday; the long cool shadows
minueted, or held counsel about their perpetual
sorrow; while the great white clouds piled
themselves up in rounded pyramids, prepared to
kindle their vapoury sacrifice to the kingly sun.
I was happy with the ruminating content of a
cow, knee deep in sorrel, when a sudden
apparition arose to start me from my summer dream.

It was the post man, who, in his scarlet mailcart,
drove smartly over our little grey bridge,
and stopped at my gate. He gave a
dislocating pull at the cottage bell, and Betsy Jane,
the housemaid, appeared on the lawn, where I
was fretting my little hour upon a happy and
padded stage of flowering turf, and handed me
a letter.

A notice from the secret tribunal, or a warning
stamped with coffin-nails and sealed with
a crimson rapparee thumb, could not have more
disturbed my peace. The hideous letter ran
thus:

"TENTH DOWNSHIRE RIFLES.

"There will be a Field-day of this Corps, Tuesday,
the seventh of June, on Badgerbury Downs.
The Eleventh Ramshire Sappers will keep the
ground.

"Caps and gaiters. Please to attend. Parade at
two P.M. at Staunton Corner.

"As it is likely that Sir Edward Hardstock will
inspect the corps in July, Captain Bagshot earnestly
hopes the members of the corps will make a point of
attending."

A field-day, and the thermometer at 100 in
the shade, the trout in Eelbury brook floating
on their backs, done to a turn, and the very
oxen in the meadows smoking as if they were
already on the spit? What, a field-day, when
the red-faced mowers have to stop every other
minute to take in beer, and the field-paths are
cracking in lines that look like charts of some
underground country? But Bagshot has been
in India, and this heat actually braces him, while
it undoes me quite.

It is my first field-day, and I feel a slight
sensation of alarm at being made an exhibition of
to rows of rustics, and to the country families
under the marquees; but I must go, for Bagshot
is a client of mine, and if I were to be
absent, he would take it as a personal insult, and
would send for my bill next day. The constant
use of curry has heated the noble captain's
blood; yet I am rather pursy, and know I shall
be knocked up for three days by this terrible
sham-soldiering. All very well for soldiers who
have been brought up as labourers, who live
in the open air, and are perpetually carrying
arms; but, for a stout, sedentary man, rather a
serious thing in the blazing month of June, and
thunderstorms about, too!

Monday I received the notice; Tuesday is the
field-day. I rise early to prepare my arms;
I send the green uniform with the rhubarb
lace to be brushed; I pull at the bronze bugle
buttons to see if they are all safe. I use
two old cambric handkerchiefs furbishing up
my rifle-barrel, and still the rag emerges from
the tube with smears of orange rust upon it,
though the gun came only yesterday from the
gunsmith's. At last I discover that the rust
comes, not from the barrel, but from the little
cup at the top of the steel ramrod; that
removed, my fire-arms are ready for the shammest
fight Bagshot can devise. I clean my leather
bands, with one preparation; I clean the brass-
work of my rifle with another preparation; and I
get as dirty as a blacksmith when my rifle gets
as clean as a new pin. I tie fast my cap-pouch,
and pull into its proper place my cartridge-box;
I polish my bayonet, which is so sharp that it
might be used for any sort of surgical purpose;
I put on my muffin-cap (the 10th Downshire are
very proud of being the only regiment that wear
muffins, or brimless caps, that cannot be got
on the head, and therefore lie on one side of it,
like buns, and which, moreover, have no peak
to shelter the rifleman's eyes from the sun while
firing); I take up my belt a hole or two; I feel
smart, alert, vigilant, ready even to meet the
bilious and searching eye of Bagshot. I put a
wicker flask of sherry and some sandwiches in
my pocket, and am now armed and victualled
for any siege that heat, hunger, fatigue, can
beleaguer me with.

I am at the station in a very short time, rifle
on shoulder, and find there all my gallant
company, most of them a damp red as to the face;
most of them mopping themselves, looking into
the inside of their muffins, opening sandwich
canteens that look like shaving-boxes, trying on their
bayonet with a twist and click for practice;
or looking at square cards, on which the bugle
calls are printed; all are waiting to fall in,
what time that pale fierce bugler (whose bugle
hangs by a thick green cord round his neck) shall
blow the required note. Captain Bagshot is
having an early curry in the refreshment-room;
but Captain Badliver is here, and so are Captain
Smart, and Lieutenant Turpin, and Sergeants
Sharp, and Todykin, and Briscott; also our good-
natured, unwearied musketry instructor, Mr.
Foresight; and our exhausted-looking armourer,
who always seems jaded with perpetual rifle
cleaning, and who, to swell the roll-call,
has been clothed in the Downshire rifle dress.
Some men are posing themselves gracefully on
one leg, like the vignette to the Downshire
Rifle Quadrilles, leaning their chins on the
muzzle stoppers of their rifles; others are
squatting down on steps with a bivouacking
and brigand air; the majority are adjusting
their straps to their chins, or rather lips.
Suddenly, Bagshot appears, clinking his steel
scabbard under his arm; Badliver carries his,
tucked under his arm like an umbrella. The
bugle sounds; the cheery cry of " Fall in!"
resounds through the vaulted station; the
engine screams with hungry impatience to be off
to Badgerbury; we form " two deep;" we
"right face;" we " trail arms;" we stumble
up iuto the great horse vans of carriages.

A snorting yell, and we are off. Captain
Smart brings the second company refreshment
tickets, entitling the lucky holder to