On the night of the 6th, with twenty other Scots Greys, I was detailed for out-picket; and under a Captain Wilmot Brook, of the 11th Light Dragoons, with twenty men of that regiment, all supplied with one meal of cooked food for ourselves and forage for our horses, we rode two miles to the front, on the road that leads from Cancalle to St. Malo. There the captain chose a position for his picket, and threw out a line of videttes, whose orders were to keep a sharp look-out, on peril of their lives; to fire their carbines on the approach of any armed party, but to permit all persons who came singly, bearing provisions for sale, to pass to their rear, without exacting a fee for their passage--to observe well the country in their front, and to communicate whatever they saw that seemed hostile or suspicious, by signal or otherwise, to each other, and at once to the officer in command of the outpost. These orders were rhymed rapidly over to me about nightfall, and I was left for a two hours' vigil, in a gloomy hollow way between two hills, about eight hundred yards in front of the mainbody of the picket. This was my _first_ responsible duty, and it so nearly ended in bringing me to a disgraceful and violent death, that the narration of that night's adventure deserves a chapter to itself. CHAPTER XVII. THE VIDETTE. To a young soldier few duties or situations are more trying than the post of advanced sentinel by night, in a strange place and foreign country, in time of war and danger--all the more so, perhaps, if the said soldier be a Scotsman, imbued with some of those superstitions, which few of his countrymen are without. "Keep your ears and eyes open, young man," said Captain Brook as he left me. "Remember that you are not now a sentry at the gate of a home-barrack, which no one thinks of attacking, but that you are an advanced vidette, on whose vigilance and acuteness depend the safety of the picket, the honour of the army, and hence, perhaps, of the nation itself." "Does he deem me stupid, or what?" thought I, with some pique, as he rode off, accompanied by Sergeant Duff of ours, and I was left alone--alone to my own reflections. The moon which shone so brightly last night was now hidden by masses of cloud, yet a few stray beams lighted the landscape at a distance. In the immediate foreground, and around me, all was sunk in darkness and obscurity; but after my eyes became accustomed to the gloom, I could make out the form of the two rugged eminences or hills which overhung my post, and the pathway that wound from thence into the defile between them. Beyond that defile I could see the distant country, lighted at times, as I have said, by the fitful gleams of the moon. All was still and I heard only the champing of my horse upon his powerful military bit, as I sat with the butt of my carbine planted on my right thigh, gazing steadily at the darkened pass in my front. The time passed slowly.