If it be asked how time was found for so much dismounted work, the explanation is simple. From the 1st of May to the 1st October the troop horses were turned out to grass, and committed to the keeping of a “grass guard”--having, most probably, first gone through a course of bleeding at the hands of the farriers. It appears to have mattered but little how far distant the grass might be from the men’s quarters; for we find that if it lay six or eight miles away, the “grass guard” was to consist of a corporal and six men, while if it were within a mile or two, two or three old soldiers were held to be amply sufficient. Men on “grass guard” were not allowed to take their cloaks with them, but were provided with special coats, whereof three or four were kept in each troop for the purpose. “Grass-time,” it may be added, was not the busy, but the slack time for cavalrymen in those days--the one season wherein furloughs were permitted. The close of the “grass-time” must have been a curious period in the soldier’s year, with its renewal of the long-abandoned stable work and probable extra tightening of discipline. On the farriers above all it must have borne heavily, bringing with it, as we must conclude, the prospect of reshoeing every horse in the regiment. Moreover, the penalty paid by a farrier who lamed a horse was brutally simple: his liquor was stopped till the horse was sound. Nevertheless the farrier had his consolations, for he received a halfpenny a day for every horse under his charge, and must therefore have rejoiced to see his troop stable well filled. The men, probably, in a good regiment, required less smartening after grass-time than their horses. Light Dragoons thought a great deal of themselves, and were well looked after even on furlough. At the bottom of every furlough paper was a note requesting any officer who might read it to report to the regiment if the bearer were “unsoldierly in dress or manner.” We gather, from a stray order, “that soldiers shall wear their hair _under_ their hats,” that even in those days men were bitten with the still prevailing fashion of making much of their hair; but we must hope that Hale’s regiment knew better than to yield to it. Every man, of course, had a queue of leather or of his own hair, either hanging at full length, in which case it was a “queue,” or partly doubled back, when it became a “club.” Which fashion was favoured by Colonel Hale we are, alas! unable to say,[2] but we gain some knowledge of the _coiffure_ of the Light Dragoons from the following standing orders:-- “The Light Dragoon is always to appear clean and dressed in a soldier-like manner in the streets; his skirts tucked back, a black stock and black gaiters, but _no powder_. On Sundays the men are to have white stocks, and be well powdered, but no grease on their hair.”