[CHAPTER XXXIV.--GUILFOYLE REDIVIVUS.]
Quietly and before day dawned the trench-guards were relieved, and we marched wearily back towards the camp. I had dismissed my company, and was betaking me to my tent, threading my way along the streets formed by those of each regiment, when an ambulance wagon, four-wheeled and covered by a canvas hood, drew near. It was drawn by four half-starved-looking horses; the drivers were in the saddles; and an escort rode behind, muffled in their blue cloaks. It was laden, no doubt, with boots warranted not to fit, and bags of green or unripe coffee for the troops, who had no means of grinding it or of cooking it, firewood being our scarcest commodity. An officer of the Land Transport Corps, in cloak and forage-cap, was riding leisurely in rear of the whole, and as he passed I heard him singing, for his own edification, apparently: the refrain of his ditty was,
"Ach nein! ach nein! ich darf es nich.
Leb'wohl! Leb'wohl!"
"Heavens!" thought I, pausing in my progress, "can this be my quondam acquaintance, the attaché at the Court of Catzenelnbogen here--here, in the Crimea!"
"Can you direct me to the commissariat quarter of the Second Division?" asked the singer, a little pompously.
"By all the devils it is Guilfoyle!" I exclaimed.
"Oho--You are Hardinge of the 23rd--well met, Horatio!" said he, reining-in his horse, and with an air of perfect coolness.
"How came you to be here, sir?" I asked, sternly.
"I question your right to ask, if I do not your tone," he replied; "however, if you feel interested in my movements, I may mention that I was going to the dogs or the devil, and thought I might as well take Sebastopol on the way."
"It is not taken yet--but you, I hope, may be."