Nearer rolled the dust--slowly--slowly; a snail might have moved faster, I thought, than this regiment, famed once as the Rifles, and blessed with the reputation of being very unlike a snail in general character. Mrs. Melville needed no stimulant to do her best; affection and ambition prompted her alike--she had served with the Third before, and was now again of them--and she worked like a beaver to have the table well spread for the expected guests. The slow, heavy tramp of the approaching troops shook the earth like far-off thunder; but the dust was so thick that it was hard to tell where the soldiers left off and the wagons commenced, while the train moved. At last there came the sudden clanging of trumpets, so shrill and discordant that I put my hands up to my ears, and then the command halted near our camp. Let no one dream of a band of gay cavaliers riding grandly into the garrison on prancing steeds, and with flying banners! Alas, for romance and poetry! Gaunt, ragged-looking men, on bony, rough-coated horses--sun-burned, dust-covered, travel-worn, man and beast. Was there nothing left of the old material of the dashing, death-daring Rifles? Ah, well! These men had seen nothing for long weeks but the red, sun-heated soil of the Red River country; had drank nothing but the thick, blood-red water of the river; had eaten nothing but the one dry, hard cracker, dealt out to them each day; for they had been led wrong by the guide, had been lost, so that they reached Fort Union long after, instead of long before, the Fifth Infantry. Their camping-ground was assigned them quite a distance from the Fifth, and we rode over the next day to visit the ladies who had come with the command. The difference between the two camps struck me all the more forcibly, I presume, because General Sykes was famed for the order and precision he enforced; and when we rode up to his tent two days later, to bid him good-bye (the officers of the Third having received orders to join their regiment), I exclaimed, in tones of mild despair: "Oh, general, can you not come with us, and take command of the Third?" He shook his head solemnly, looking over to the cavalry camp. "Nothing would give me greater pleasure, madame, than to accede to your wishes; but really in this instance I must decline. _There are too many unruly horses for me in that camp._" I hope the general meant only what he said; I hope too the Third will forgive me, when I say that an old soldier in the ranks, a German, once told me in confidence that every member of that regiment could pass muster for the Wild Huntsman, so well known in the annals of terror in German fable-history. II.