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Shortly after daybreak an English light dragoon arrived with a despatch, and from then onward the place was in a turmoil, officers continually riding up and away. Always the same name was upon their lips: "Sir Stapleton Sir Stapleton." It was hard for me to lie there with a dry moustache and watch the great flagons which were brought out by the landlord to these English officers.
We saw their officers doing every thing they could to check their flight, imploring, threatening, even cutting at them with their sabres, but it was no use; if they were to be killed, it must be in their own way, and they preferred being cut down by their officers to encountering the deadly precision of rifles, in the hands of men who, being sure of hitting a squirrel at a hundred yards, were not likely to miss a Durango dragoon at any point within range.
A daring, splendid dragoon, an honest, chivalrous, and devoted servant of his Queen, a conscientious adherent of Leicester, and a firm believer in his capacity and character, he was, however, not a man of sufficient experience or subtlety to perform the various tasks imposed upon him by the necessities of such a situation.
If attacked by a superior force, as sometimes happened, he invariably retreated across the Sulphur Spring valley into his stronghold in the Dragoon mountains. Because of the many atrocities that were committed by the Indians, white men were afraid to go into that country to settle.
"Has there been a strange gentleman staying with you during the storm?" continued the dragoon, speaking with interest, and in some degree sharing in the evident anxiety of the father. "This gentleman here favored us with his company during the rain, and has not yet departed."
Her corsage, with wide facings and enormous basques and all ablaze with huge steel buttons, was blood-red, and it was hard to tell, so aristocratic and so revolutionary at one and the same time was her array, whether it was the colours of the victims or of the headsman that she sported. A young officer, a dragoon, accompanied her.
The cavalry division under Lord Lucan consisted of the Light Cavalry Brigade under Lord Cardigan, composed of the 4th Light Dragoons, the 8th Hussars, 11th Hussars, 13th Dragoons and 17th Lancers; and the Heavy Cavalry Brigade under Brigadier-General Scarlett, consisting of the Scots Greys, 4th Dragoon Guards, 5th Dragoon Guards, and 6th Dragoons. Of these the Scots Greys had not yet arrived.
The regiments forming the cavalry division were the Second Dragoon Guards, Ninth Lancers, Fourth Hussars, Sixth Dragoon Guards, with a contingent of the Household Guards. The First Army Corps was given the right of the line from Binche to Mons. It was commanded by Sir Douglas Haig.
While I was toasting myself at his fire, so sharply set that I could have eaten one of my boots, I observed his German orderly dragoon, at an adjoining fire, stirring up the contents of a camp-kettle, that once more revived my departing hopes, and I presently had the satisfaction of seeing him dipping in some basins, presenting one to the general, one to the aide-de-camp, and a third to myself.
I see a young Irish gentleman capable of performing prodigies of valor. I learn incidentally that the acme of all heroism is the cornetcy of a dragoon regiment. I hear a good deal of French! No, thank you," said the Haunted Man hurriedly, as he stayed the waving hand of the Goblin; "I would rather not go to the Peninsula, and don't care to have a private interview with Napoleon."
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