It poured down in torrents; roads were turned into watercourses, the fields and hollows became swamps; we had a smart brush with some Lancers at Genappe, where our 7th Hussars and 1st Life Guards charged several times; the 10th Hussars had also occasion to dismount some men and line a hedgerow with their carbines; but the main feature of the retreat was a weary tramp in a deluge of rain. The cavalry had their cloaks, it is true, but the greatcoats of the foot-soldiers had been sent back to England. Soaked to the skin, we arrived at the ridge above La Haye Sainte, and prepared to pass the night without covering of any kind. The French advanced almost up to us, and Captain Mercer was giving them a few rounds from his 9-pounders when a man in a shabby old drab overcoat and rusty round hat strolled towards him and began a conversation. Mercer, who thought him one of the numerous _amateurs_ with whom Brussels was swarming, answered curtly enough, and the stranger went away. That shabby man was General Picton, who fell next day on the very spot where he received this unmerited snubbing. He fought at Quatre Bras in plain clothes, having joined the army hurriedly in advance of his baggage, and there is good reason to believe that he wore the same dress at Waterloo. Now commenced preparations for a dismal bivouac. The French fell back and did not disturb us again, they too suffering from the drenching rain, which beat with a melancholy hissing on the cornfields, the clover, the potato patches and ploughed land which formed both positions. Some of our officers found shelter in neighbouring cottages; Lord Uxbridge, afterwards Marquis of Anglesey, crept into a piggery and sipped tea with Waymouth of the 2nd Life Guards; but most of them cowered with their men round wretched fires which here and there were coaxed into burning. One of Mercer’s lieutenants had an umbrella, which had caused much merriment during the march, but he and his captain found it a haven of refuge under the lee of a hedge that night. The cavalry stood to their horses, cloaked, with one flap over the saddle; some few were lucky enough to get a bundle of straw or peasticks to sit down upon, and all looked anxiously for the dawn--fated to prove the last to thousands of them. With morning the rain gradually declined to a drizzle, which finally ceased; fires sprang up, arms were cleaned, and a buzz of voices rose along the line as tall Lifeguardsmen went down behind La Haye Sainte to dig potatoes, where, a few hours later, they were charging knee to knee, and every one made shift to get what he could--with most it was only a hard biscuit--and to dry himself, which was a still more difficult matter.