In the Talbot District, Training Day since 1812 had been kept up with constancy. In spite of that, the inhabitants were somewhat unprepared when ’37 came. But the gathering of the Loyalists, however isolated they were from one another, was willing and surprisingly quick. Old officers of the army sought for and gathered up volunteers; they had neither drum nor fife, but there was a ready response from willing hearts, and from hands equally willing, however uncouth and unused to arms. The most embarrassing hindrances, sometimes, to everything like organization and drill and obedience to orders were those same old soldiers when, as was generally the case, they knew more than their officers. They stood in the ranks, and at the same time found fault with every word of command, so that they demoralized that which they had brought together. No set of volunteers was more difficult to handle than the old soldiers who had settled in Adelaide. Captain Pegley, although himself a retired regular officer, found them almost unmanageable when mixed with the more docile farmers and farmers’ sons. After much adjuration he at length broke out into exclamations which, on the whole, suited his mixed audience better than set military phrase. “Haw, man! gee, man!” cried he, a startling contrast to the studied politeness of some of the subs, who, with nothing whatever of the drill-sergeant tone, whenever the openings in the ranks were too wide, would say, “Won’t you be kind enough to step nearer this way; now, you men, be good enough to keep your places.” The sharpest order delivered by these subs was, “Halt! and let the others come up, can’t you!” Wheeling into line disclosed a line looking like the snake fence surrounding the stubble field which contained the wheel. Marching in quick time with one bagpipe and a fiddle, or with a single drum and fife, was not antidote enough to the stubble as they passed the gallant Lieutenant-Colonel in blue frock coat, white trousers shoved up from his boots, a round hat above his fat face, seated in unostentatious dignity on his venerable white mare, whose sides were blown out with grass and her neck adorned with a rope halter. “Now, men, _won’t_ you fall in,” he would pathetically inquire, while they showed every disposition to fall out. For, instead of the drum boy, in the centre of the parade-ground was a keg containing that liquid which in Lower Canada, when carried in a seal-skin covered bottle, was known as _Lac dulce_, or sometimes as old man’s milk. Then would Captain Rappelje command to drink the Sovereign’s health, which was done _con amore_; trials of strength, boxing and wrestling, would follow, when “Abe would knock Jehial as straight as a loon’s foot.”