Hence it arose that at length all that, whether sick or sound, wounded or not, were found straggling off the line of march or else did not have their quarters in the field with their own regiment, were called "Merode-brothers," just as before they were known as "swine-catchers" and "bee-taylors": for they be like to the drones in the beehives which when they have lost their sting can work no more nor make honey, but only eat. If a trooper lose his horse or a musqueteer his health, or his wife and child fall ill and must stay behind, at once you have a pair and a half of Merode-brothers, a crew that can be compared with none but gipsies, for not only do they straggle round the army in front, in the flanks, in the middle, as it pleases them, but also they be like the gipsies in manners and customs. For you can see them huddled together (like partridges in winter) behind the hedges in the shade or, if the season require it, in the sun, or else lying round a fire smoking tobacco and idling, while the good soldier meanwhile must endure with the colours heat, thirst, hunger, and all manner of misery. Here again goes a pack of them pilfering alongside the line of march, while many a poor soldier is ready to sink under the weight of his arms. They plunder all they can find before, behind, and beside the army: and what they cannot consume that they spoil, so that the regiments, when they come to their quarters or into camp, do often find not even a good draught of water; and when they are strictly forced to stay with the baggage-train, you will often find this greater in number than the army itself. And though they do march together and lodge together, fight and make common cause, yet have they no captain to order them, no Feldwebel nor sergeant to dust their jackets, no corporal to rouse them up, no drummer to summon them to picket or bivouac duty, and, in a word, no one to bring them into the line of battle like an adjutant nor to assign them their lodgings like a quartermaster, but they live like noblemen. Howbeit whenever a commissariat-officer comes, they are the first to claim their share, undeserved though it be. Yet are the Provost-marshal and his fellows their greatest plague, being such as at times, when they play their tricks too scurvily, do set iron bracelets on their hands and feet, or even adorn them with a hempen collar and hang them up by their precious necks. They keep no watch, they dig no trenches, they serve on no forlorn hope, and they will never fight in line of battle, yet they be well nourished and fed. But what damage the general, the peasant, and the whole army, in which many such companions are to be found, do suffer, is not to be described. The basest of horse-boys, that doth naught but forage, is worth to the general more than one thousand such, that do make a trade of such foraging and lie at ease without excuse upon their bear-skins,[30] till they be taken off by the adversary or