"'There is a Providence doth shape our ends,
Rough hew them how we will.'"
CHAPTER VIII.
HEAD QUARTERS.
Having now related how I became a soldier, almost in desperation and misanthropy, I shall soon show how such emotions gave place to better, to braver, and to higher aspirations, fanned by that blessed hope which never dies in the heart of youth.
I learned—but not for a long time after this period—that when news of the step I had taken was brought by the sorrowing old Rector to Netherwood, it gave great satisfaction to my worthy grandfather, and still more to my affectionate cousin Tony, who drained a full bumper to the health of the Frenchman whose bullet should rid them of me for ever; and then Sir Basil was actually barbarous enough to shake him by the hand and say—
"Zounds! Tony, my boy, you may be heir to my title as well as acres, and die a baronet yet!"
After travelling eighteen miles we reached Rothbury, a quaint old market town of Northumberland, pleasantly situated in a valley overlooked by a lofty ridge of rocks. Our head-quarters were here, but some of our troops were billeted at Bickerton, Caistron, and other townships of the parish.
The Coquet flowed through the town, and every morning one of our first duties was to take our horses there to water, which was done by beat of kettledrum, for as yet the Greys, being Horse Grenadiers, had no brass trumpets.
On the morning after our arrival at Rothbury, I was brought before my commanding officer, Colonel George Preston. Tall, handsome, and venerable in aspect, he was a noble veteran officer, though somewhat of an eccentric character in his way. He was now far advanced in life, and had been from his boyhood in the Scots Greys, having entered the regiment as a kettledrummer in the last years of Queen Anne.
He was a captain at the battle of Val, where, at the head of only thirty Greys, he made so furious a charge upon a great body of French cavalry, that he routed and drove them fairly off the field. He then pulled out his purse, and gave each trooper a ducat with his left hand, for his right was so swollen by the vigorous use he had made of his broad sword, that the hilt had to be sawn in two by the regimental armourer before he could be released from it.