"He look'd serious enough this morning though, Master Tom, as he was turning out."
"Serious! and so did you; hasn't he enough to make him look serious? Bony, and all the flower of the French before him. I like to see him look serious; he's just a thinking a bit, that's all. Look, look, look! where he is now pelting away up the hill there. My eye! but he's a rum on'."
"Ay, just as he was in the ould ground," cried an Hibernian. "'Pon my sowl, I think I'm in Spain agin. There he is, success to him!—an' the smell o' the powther too so natural."
"The light troops are pushing on towards that wood," said Gray, fixing his eyes on a particular spot.
"Sure enough they are. Ah! we'll soon have the boys up who will set them off with a flea in their ear."
"Look—on the rising ground there, about half a mile away, how they are moving about—that is a train of artillery—see the guns—there is a regiment of infantry going to the left—do you see their bayonets? A fine open place here for a battle."
"Not so good as that which we passed—the plain fields we crossed immediately after we left the forest of Soignes," said Gray: "however, that little wood on our right, in front, which runs along the road, is a good flank, and the village before us is a strong point."
"Ay, but you see the Belgian troops couldn't keep it; the French have pushed them out of it."
"We'll soon have it again, I'll warrant; our men have a fine open ground here, to give the French a lesson in dancing," cried the corporal of the party, throwing himself down on his back in the corn. "Here I'll lie and rest myself; and I don't think I shall be disturb'd by the buzzing of the blue flies! I'll have a snooze, until the Highlanders shall come up."
The party remained undisturbed, as the last speaker had intimated, until about half-past one o'clock; nothing having been done in the way of attack by the French. During the interval, Gray employed himself in watching closely the scene around him, and mentally discussing the chances of the now inevitably approaching fight.