On the day after I reached Osnaburg, Tom Kirkton, with a Scotch smirk in his face, handed me a letter addressed in a lady's small Italian hand.
It proved to be a kind one from my cousin Aurora—"the little usurper," as I named her; "the fair pretender," as she was styled by Tom.
Well, thought I, amid the horrors of war and the bitterness of such a wayward passion as that I cherished for the French girl, it is something above all price to have a pure English heart to remember, to pray for, and perhaps to love me, as this dear Aurora does at home.
In a postscript she sent her "best duty and kind regards to Major Shirley of the Staff."
"Poor devil!" muttered Tom, who was shaving himself for parade, and using the back of his watch as a mirror.
Having nothing else in the shape of uniform, I had to wear poor Boisguiller's gay Hussar pelisse on parade and on duty for some days, until our quartermaster supplied me with a sergeant's coat (minus its chevrons, of course), a trooper's sword, pistols and accoutrements; and in this motley guise I made my début as Lieutenant of the Light Troop (and served in it during the remainder of the campaign), for so valuable were the despatches regarding the projected movements of the French on the heights of Corbach and before the castles of Marburg and Dillenburg, that for procuring them I had been appointed to a Lieutenancy in the 2nd Dragoon Guards by Prince Ferdinand, and then gazetted back into my own corps—the boys who were second to none, and whom I had no desire to leave.
We moved soon after to Schledhausen. There we remained until the month of May, when we marched through a country covered with forests to Fritzlar, a small town which belonged to the Elector of Mentz, where we were brigaded with the 11th Light Dragoons under General Elliot till the month of June, when the army again took the field.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE HEIGHTS OF CORBACH.
The allied British and Germans under Prince Ferdinand, though less numerous than the troops under the Duc de Broglie, were in fine fighting order, yet they prudently acted chiefly on the defensive.