In the activity of that pursuit old Colonel Preston surpassed every other officer. He actually took the Greys _two hundred_ miles from the field, and captured a vast number of prisoners.* * "Regimental Records." Part of the military chest, with all the equipages of Maréchal de Contades and the Prince of Condé fell into his hands--prizes of no inconsiderable value. CHAPTER IV. PRINCE XAVIER OF SAXONY. The Light Troop had gone more than a mile from the field with the pursuing cavalry before it was ordered to return on the service just stated. When falling back, we passed through a hamlet where the baggage of our brigade was lying, and there we were surrounded by our soldiers' wives, clamorously inquiring for tidings of the past day. "Oh, please your honour, gude sir," cried one, holding her baby to her bare breast with one hand, while the other clung to my stirrup-leather, her eyes streaming with tears the while; "can you tell us if the regiment has been engaged, for heavy has the firing been all day?" "Have the Greys suffered--have the Greys suffered?" "Did you see my puir gudeman--he is in the 1st troop--John Drummond, sir?" "Shot--my poor Willie shot!" shrieked another. "Then God help his puir bairns and me in this waefu' country, for we ne'er shall see the bonnie Braes o' Angus again!" Such were some of the cries I heard on all sides as we hurried through the hamlet at a trot, and returned to the field on which the moonlight had succeeded the long level flush of the set sun. There lay all the usual amount of death and agony--the sad paraphernalia of war--and the pale dead in every variety of attitude and contortion, so close to each other that in some places one might have stepped from body to body. Already had many been stripped nude as when they came into the world by those wretches who hover like carrion crows on the skirts of an army; and their pale marble skins gleamed horribly white with their black and gaping wounds in the cold moonlight. Amid these many horrors--the dying and the dead, legs, arms, blood-gouts and spattered brains--some phlegmatic German infantry were quietly bivouacking and lighting fires to cook their supper. Others lay down weary and worn, their mouths parched with thirst, and their canteens empty, after twelve hours' marching and fighting. As we rode slowly over the field to scare plunderers and protect the wounded, I heard, amid a group of officers whom we passed, one laughing loudly, and found him to be Major Shirley. A revulsion of feeling made the flow of this man's spirits extravagant; and here, amid the rows and piles of dead and wounded--amid the expiring on that solemn, harrowing, and moonlighted plain--he was joking and laughing, like a fool or a drunkard--he, the poltroon who could not articulate an order when under a fire at noon!