At half-past six the regiment was formed up on the road and the twelve best specimens of manhood were picked out from each troop. We were soaked by rain on the way, but the sun came out when the ceremony began. We were formed up in battle array before the town hall. All round the square, on the edge of the pavement, a single rank of Highlanders, carefully sized, stood like statues. We waited the coffin, which appeared at last from a side street, preceded by a troop of English cavalry who marched slowly—their black horses were admirable creatures. Then came a section of infantry, fine, big, taking fellows, who marched with their heads down and their eyes fixed on the ground; next came superb Indian troops, who wore turbans, amongst whom were great native princes; then a contingent of Canadians, just disembarked; lastly some Highland pipers playing a lament whose refrain was eternally alike. We had heard this shrill lament for a long time, now it became stronger and more penetrating the nearer the cortège approached, and gave a strange exotic note to this old-fashioned setting of a little French town. When the coffin appeared the Highlanders who formed the guard of honour executed a strange movement. They slowly described an arc of a circle with their rifles, their outstretched right arms forming an uninterrupted line all round the square, then each man finished the movement by crossing his arms on the butt-plate of his rifle, the muzzle of which was now resting on the ground. With their heads bowed, these mourners resembled some old bas-relief. The coffin, enveloped in the Union Jack, was borne on a gun-carriage. It was all very simple and very moving. To the wild notes of the Scottish bagpipes, now silent, the clear trumpets of our dragoons replied, and their sound was in itself like sparkling metal. They continued to sound until the remains of the Field-Marshal had been placed in the town hall. After the ceremony, which we did not see, twenty-one guns thundered out, fired by batteries posted behind the square. An immense rainbow, as sharply defined as if drawn with a stroke of the brush, cut the sky with a perfect and uninterrupted semicircle. Symbol of peace, it came to earth directly behind the batteries, and the flash of the guns showed up against its iridescent screen. An English officer came to tell the Colonel that the ceremony was over, and we returned to Clarques under a beating rain, which had begun to fall again. Our next active work was at Nieuport. Motor buses brought us to Coxyde, where, amongst the slightly built villas of this watering-place, Belgian and French uniforms swarmed. Sand-dunes, on which the sand encroached on the scanty covering of grass, bordered the horizon on all sides.