“Well, sir, in the spring of 1711 the great duke arrived in the Low Countries--and glad enough were all to see him--for not only, we knew, we could lick the French and Bavarians if we were under him--but the army was always paid when the great duke commanded, and fed and clothed, too. I remember when he came back that time he brought us forty thousand woollen shirts. The kings and queens thought that we, the common soldiers, did not know what was going on, but we knew the stay-at-homes were trying to ruin the duke at court, and that he had hardly been treated civilly when he got to England, and that three colonels--Meredith, Macartney, and Heywood--had been cashiered for drinking ‘confusion to the enemies of the Duke of Marlborough.’ It was while he was away that the allied army--as ours and our allies was called--had got a handsome drubbing at Almanza, in Spain, and I can’t say that any of us cried over it; only we thought we might get drubbed ourselves if the duke didn’t come back. So you may be sure, Mr. Washington, that when the news came that the whole army was to rendezvous at Orchies, and the duke had landed in Holland on his way to us, we felt better. The queen and the ministry and the parliament might look coldly on him, but on that bleak April day, when he rode into our cantonments at Orchies, every British soldier raised his voice in a huzza for the great duke. “Marshal Villars had been all the winter throwing up redoubts and all sorts of works along his lines, from Bouchain, on the Scheldt, which lay here”--Lance stooped down at this and drew an imaginary line on the floor, and George got off the bed, and, taking the candle, sat down on the floor the better to understand--“along the Sanset, which runs this way. Lord, Mr. Washington, I’ll have to use the boot-jack to show you about Bouchain and Arras.” “And here are the snuffers,” eagerly added George, “for Arras; and here is my pocket-rule, and a piece of chalk.” Lance seized the chalk. “The very thing, sir!” And he drew a very fair map upon the floor, George watching him with bright, intelligent eyes, and afterwards taking the chalk, straightened up Lance’s rude sketch. “That’s right, sir,” said Lance, getting down on the floor himself. “It’s a pleasure to show a young gentleman like you, sir, how it was done, because you have the understanding of it, if I may make bold to say so. “Old Villars, then, being a monstrous sharp general, said to himself, ‘Aha! I’ll beat the long roll on Marlborough now,’ and he had the astonishing impudence to call his lines ‘Marlborough’s _ne plus ultra_,’ whatever that is, sir; I don’t exactly know myself, but it is some sort of impudence in French.” George laughed a little to himself at Lance’s notion of the old Latin phrase, but he was too much interested in the story to interrupt. [Illustration: SKETCHING THE DEFENCES ON THE SCHELDT]