We crept along the flank of this column of heroes, unnoticed and unknown, and soon after, clearing the Porte de Binche, got ahead and clear of them. The road was almost as much crowded as the streets of Nivelles, and I found it useless to expect to make rapid progress. For the first few miles the country was prettily wooded and interspersed with villages and neat houses; but then it began to get less wooded, less thickly inhabited, and in every way less interesting. Continued struggling on until towards evening, when our adjutant (Bell) overtook me with a little scrap of paper, on which was an order for me to bivouac either at Rœulx or Binche; but as we could not very well learn where these places were, and no guide was to be procured, and the evening began to close in, I determined on halting on a high and rather exposed piece of ground where we then happened to be. The bivouac was badly chosen--no water near, no house near, no wood near, no shelter of any kind near, and we were somehow all cross and out of humour. Set the men to work, scrubbing and cleaning appointments, this being the first opportunity of so doing. Went to sleep at nightfall. I think the nearest village to us was Haine. Some rustics who came to gape at us from a neighbouring farm told us that the King of Westphalia and another French general had passed the night of the 18th there with a few attendants, but that early on the morning of the 19th they had departed in a great hurry, evidently afraid of being overtaken.