The arrival of the regiment at Newcastle was welcomed by the magistrates, colliery owners, and county gentlemen of Northumberland, who in their apprehension of a Chartist rising leaned upon its commanding officer for the maintenance of order. At no period of his career did Colin Campbell evince greater wisdom and shrewdness than during this critical and sensitive time. Neither rash nor weak, he reassured the apprehensive and awed the disaffected. He visited in person many of the Chartist meetings, and was not slow to discern that the movement included a large proportion of supporters who advocated moral in preference to physical methods for the accomplishment of their objects. He became convinced that no serious rising would take place, yet he took every precaution to meet such a contingency. The regiment was carefully trained in street firing, and such dispositions as would be requisite in the event of the troops being called upon to act were sedulously practised. The Ninety-Eighth were loyal to a man, and their discipline was faultless. Once the Chartists seized a drummer-boy of the regiment and forced him to beat his drum at the head of a procession. The cry rose that the soldiers were fraternising with the mob and a magistrate hurried to the barracks with the ominous tidings. Campbell immediately answered--"Come, and I will show how the soldiers feel in the matter, midnight though it is!" Ordering the bugler to sound the "assembly" he took the magistrate into the barrack-yard. From the barrack-rooms came rushing out the soldiers armed and accoutred, venting vehement imprecations on the malcontents; and Campbell grimly called the magistrate's attention to the wholesome views expressed by a local "Geordie" of the regiment, who frankly signified his readiness to "stick his own grandmother if she were out." But midnight _alertes_ on scant provocation Campbell steadfastly discountenanced. His most sedulous care was for the health of his men. He habitually dispensed with all superfluous and needless guards, and he resolutely cut down sentry-duty which he did not consider absolutely necessary for the protection of public property or the requirements of the service. In this solicitude for the well-being of the soldier Campbell was stoutly upheld by Sir Charles Napier. Holding though he did to his conviction that no rising would occur, he nevertheless could not resist an urgent application from the magistracy of Durham for military assistance, and he took upon himself to despatch a detachment to that town, reporting his having done so to the general commanding the district. Napier approved of his conduct, but enjoined on him the exaction from the Durham authorities of the stipulation specified in the following terms:--"If the detachment is to remain at Durham, the magistrates must furnish a barrack with everything requisite for the men, and this barrack must be so situated that the communication with the open country can be maintained--that