"Well, well; but to let the enemy pass you——"
"I was thinking of other times, Jack."
"Very likely," said Kirkton; "on such a lonely duty, and at such a time, by night, I have too often found the thoughts of other times, and images of those I have loved or lost, who are dead, or far, far away, all come unbidden before me."
"It is unwise to look back regretfully—for the past can never come again. Oh, never more!" continued Charters, sadly, as he thought of some cherished episode of his own life; "so the wiser and the manlier way is to improve the present (pass the keg, Tom), and look boldly at the future."
"You are right, Jack," said I, as this military philosopher proceeded to light his pipe and groom his horse, which he carefully covered with his cloak; "but I fear it will be long before I can school myself into your cool way of taking things. I have seen but little of the world, Jack, and have only learned to enjoy life since embracing the profession which sets no value upon it."
"Time and travel will improve your views, my boy; and 'all travel,' says Dr. Johnson, 'has its advantages; if it lead a man to a better country, he learns to improve his own; if to a worse, to enjoy it.' I have travelled much in my time—steady, old horse, steady!—and as I did so with sundry rounds of ball cartridge at my back, I have learned much that Dr. Johnson never thought of."
"In what way, Jack—to handle a dice-box and make love to the barmaids?" asked Tom.
"I have learned more than that," retorted Charters, somewhat coldly; "travel taught me to be charitable; for one finds good people everywhere, abroad as well as at home, for as it takes a great many men to make an army, so many people are required to make a nation."
"Bah!" shouted Tom Kirkton, who was in his shirt-sleeves and attending to our cooking; "we have had enough of musty moralising. This is like one of old father's sermons, poor man! and a sermon sounds oddly in your mouth, Jack. Here is a rasher of bacon, broiled on a ramrod and done to a turn. Come here while it is hot and savoury, for we may say with the fool in the Scripture, 'Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.'"
"Boot and saddle! To horse, you fellows there!" cried the loud and authoritative voice of a staff officer as a strange sequel to Tom's ominous speech. He proved to be General Elliot, who was passing through our bivouac at a hand gallop, accompanied by his aide-de-camp, both plumed and aiguiletted. "To horse—the Light Dragoons!"