WAR PICTURES IN TIME OF PEACE. 25 



out a little, rifles were shifted, pipes lighted, and breaking into 

 a song, the troop? tramped gayly forward through the mud and 

 mire, to the admiration and astonishment of the inmates of the 

 occasional farm-houses we passed. At one farm a number of 

 youngsters had rushed out of the houses and stood by the road- 

 side, gazing with wide -opened eyes at the unusual sight. All 

 had a slice of bread and a bowl of soup in either hand, which 

 they steadily continued to dispose of, stopping now and then 

 only long enough to grin at the chaff of the soldiers. The 

 women looked on admiringly, and one vivacious lady wondered 

 loudly why there was no music, while one of the farm-hands, 

 in his quality of old soldier, explained that, " en campagne," 

 troops dispense with much of the fuss and feathers of the 

 " piping times of peace." 



Some of my friends among the ofificers described the plan 

 of the manoeuvres to me as we marched along. The enemy, 

 represented by a body of troops about equal in number to 

 our own, were supposed to have landed on the coast, and to 

 be threatening two important commercial and manufacturing 

 towns of France. Our objective point was Yvetot, on the line 

 of the railway between Havre and Rouen, and we expected to 

 meet them near there, their headquarters being that day prob- 

 ably at a place called Bolbec, situated a few kilometres from 

 the town we were then raarchinsf on. 



We had been on the road for four or five hours when sud- 

 denly we heard a shot, followed immediately by several others, 

 directly in our front, and the column came to a halt. We saw 

 some movement up the road, where it disappeared over the top 

 of a hill, commands were heard, and the troops began to move 

 off to the right and left, and form in column of battalions in the 

 fields. The foremost regiments threw out squads of skirmish- 

 ers, the men moving at a run up the rising ground in our front. 



