CHAPTER XXVI

Summary

I put up a large packet to you on Saturday, which will accompany this; but I was shy of making it thicker. Sunday, the whole camp was glad of a halt; the sandy roads tire all the people much.

There was a very large congregation at church, I was told; we have so many troops with us now, and Y.'s preaching is in great reputation. On Monday we marched eleven more miles with the same dusty result. The chief incident was, that G. was to have tried an Arabian of W. O.'s, which is a perfect lamb in a crowd, and was intended to officiate at the great review ‘as is to be;’ but the syce by mistake gave him another horse of W.'s which pulls worse than G.'s own horse. F., who was riding with him, assured him that the Arabian had such a tender mouth that it was only chafing because he held it too tight: he loosened the bridle—away went the horse like a shot, and away went twenty-five of the body-guard after him, thinking it was his lordship's pleasure to go at that helter-skelter pace: away went M. who is on duty; in short, nothing could be finer than the idea; but they all pulled up when they saw how it was. G.'s horse galloped on two miles for its own amusement, and then he made it go another for his, and finally changed it for his own horse, whose merits rose by comparison.