The season of summer drill at Aldershot had come to a close, and Sir Evelyn Wood was dismissing--some with curt but cordial benediction, some with that outspoken objurgation of which he is so great a master--the regiments which were to find winter quarters elsewhere than on the bleak slope of the Hampshire standing camp. Among the departing regiments was that steady old corps the Regal Dragoons, who were bound for Norwich and quietude after three years of scouting and flying column business. The Regals carried no “side,” and were not addicted to cheap swagger, but the grand old regiment was, in military phrase, “all there when it was wanted.” Peterborough had praised it in Spain, Marlborough in the Low Countries and Bavaria, Wellington in the Peninsula and at Waterloo. The serried mass of Russian horsemen felt the brunt of it as the heavy squadrons thundered behind Scarlett and Elliot on the morning of Balaclava. Old Guardlex was its chief, the senior colonel on active service in the British Army, for his promotion had been cruelly slow since, the junior cornet of the Regals, he had ridden over the hills to the upland on which were dropping stray cannon-shot from the Tchernaya fight. His moustache was snow-white and his hair grizzled, but the old soldier’s stalwart figure was still straight as a dart, the broad shoulders were carried square, and the strong right arm could make the sabre whistle again in the sword exercise, of his dexterity in which the chief was proud. Colonel Guardlex was very particular in regard to the recruits he accepted for his regiment; but there never was a regiment in the modern British Army which did not contain some bad characters. Probably there were fewer in the Regals than in any other cavalry regiment in the service. This handful of black sheep it was who, when L’Estrange paid his short visit to Aldershot, had deceived him with the assurance that the regiment as a whole was ready to co-operate in any mischief.