"The Gordon Highlanders went straight up the hill without check or hesitation. Headed by their pipers, and led by Colonel Mathias, with Major Macbean on his right, and Lieutenant A. F. Gordon on his left, this splendid battalion marched across the open. It dashed through a murderous fire, and in forty minutes had won the heights, leaving three officers and thirty men killed or wounded on its way. The first rush of the Highlanders was deserving of the highest praise, for they had just undergone a very severe climb, and had reached a point beyond which other troops had been unable to advance for over three hours. The first rush was followed at short intervals by a second and a third, each led by officers; and, as the leading companies went up the path for the final assault, the remainder of the troops streamed on in support, but few of the enemy waited for the bayonet, many of them being shot down as they fled in confusion." Supremely heroic on a point of romantic sentiment is our Gordon Highlander. When Cameron fell at Quatre Bras, he was not only mortally wounded, but pinned down by his horse. In this helpless condition he was recognised by one of the enemy, who swiftly rushed forward to bayonet him. But swifter still came the cold steel of Ewen Macmillan (the Colonel's foster brother) and pierced the would-be murderer to the heart. Ewen extricated his leader and bore him off; then, his master safe, he turned back with the set purpose of securing the saddle on which he had sat through many a victorious battle. In the thick of the fight the imperturbable Scot, amid a hail of bullets, secured that saddle and returned safely with it to his company, exhibiting it with a fine mingling of triumph and regret. "We must leave them the carcase," he said, "but they shan't get the saddle where Fassiefern sat." That was what he had risked his life a thousand times a minute for--the saddle where Fassiefern had sat! And not only in stirring deeds of deathless glory have the Gordon Highlanders shone in the starry sky of Britain's fame. In the course of their long career they have been called upon to suffer and endure tests of hardship and privation, which prove the true mettle of the British soldier. They have played many parts in the theatre of war where the limelight did not fall. It was even their fate to take part in the terrible retreat to Bremen. Mr. W. Richards gives a grim description of some of these hardships: "The high, keen wind carried the drifted snow and sand with such violence that the human frame could scarcely resist its power; the cold was intense; the water, which collected in the hollow eyes of the men, congealed as it fell, and hung in icicles from their eyelashes; the breath froze, and hung in icy incrustations about their haggard faces, and on the blankets and coats which they wrapped about them."