Those were days when, after a victory, discipline went to the wall and was practically non-existent; they were days when the bodies of those who were killed in action were robbed, almost as they fell--nay, when even the wounded, as they lay helpless, were stripped naked by their own comrades and left to perish on the field (though _that_, indeed, was common enough amongst our troops even in the Peninsular War half a century later). And now, here at Minden, as ever after a great engagement, when villages or towns are sacked, much plunder had fallen into the hands of the victorious army; wine and brandy from the wine-houses of the wrecked villages was being poured recklessly down the ever-thirsty throats of the men, and soldiers, already half drunk, were to be seen knocking out the heads of up-ended wine-casks the quicker to get at their contents, whilst others, shouting and singing, reeled about, many of them perhaps with a couple of loaves, or a ham, or what not, stuck on their bayonets. Such scenes, and scenes worse by far, were but too common in those days, and even the authority of officers was of small avail at such a time. Into the midst of such a pandemonium as this came small parties of the cavalry, most of them already excited with drink and ready for any devilry. Among the noisiest and most quarrelsome of the dragoons were two non-commissioned officers--brutal-looking ruffians both of them--who made their way from group to group, drinking wherever the chance offered, shouting obscene songs, and making themselves insufferably offensive whenever a man more quietly disposed than his comrades happened to be met. Boastful and quarrelsome, these two, with a few dragoons of different regiments, at length attached themselves to Sempil's Regiment, amongst whom it chanced that a group of men, more quiet and well-behaved than the general run, sat around a fire, cleaning their arms or cooking rations, and discussing the battle and the heavy losses of the regiment. It was not difficult to guess that the majority of the group were men bred among the great, sweeping, round-backed hills of the Scottish Border--from "up the watters" in Selkirk or Peeblesshires, some of them, others again perhaps from Liddesdale, Eskdale, or Annandale, or one of the many dales famous in Border history; you could hear it in their tongue. But also there was in those quiet, strongly-built men something that spoke of the old, dour, unconquerable, fighting Border stock that for so many centuries lived at feud with English neighbours. Many of them had joined the regiment four years earlier, when it had passed through the Border on its march from Fort William to Buckinghamshire.