When the officer, late in the afternoon, rides back from the army headquarters with a letter for the corps commander, he finds a different scene. At a village in the middle of the forest the leading waggons of the train are beginning to form up north and south of the road. There is here an extensive open space, which before night will be packed with waggons. Farther on the road is clear. The heavy baggage has dispersed among the cross-roads, each set of waggons seeking the quarters of its regiment. At the western edge of the forest the troops of the army corps have taken possession of all the villages on the road and in the neighbourhood, so that within a radius of six miles from where the road enters the open country every farm or cluster of buildings is tenanted by its company or battery. The villages farthest to the west contain the advanced guard, and beyond them still the outposts have placed picquets and sentries in all the roads and lanes leading to the west. The general's quarters are in a straggling village on the main road, at the White Cross Inn. In front of the house an officer is explaining to an old farmer that the provisions produced by the villagers are satisfactory, that no further requisition will be made, but that for a further supply of oats, cheese, and bacon, if delivered next morning, payment will be made in cash. In a small parlour of the inn two officers are busy examining the contents of half a dozen mail bags collected from post-offices in the district. Upstairs the general, who has just come in from the outposts, is hearing reports. The corps intendant proposes to form a temporary depot at the village where the trains are parked, and to send back the requisitioned carts next morning to the railway terminus assigned to the corps. Another officer announces that the telegraph from army headquarters will by evening be opened as far as the same village, a third that 150 horses are unserviceable, and that it will be two days before fresh horses from home will reach the depot. A fourth brings a list of the number of men who are disabled by sore feet, diarrhoea, and sunstroke. At this moment comes the letter from army headquarters, which instructs the general to be ready at short notice to march his whole corps towards the north, along the front of the forest. This involves the movement of the trains along a cross-road through the forest, and arrangements must be made to ensure this road, which is a bad one, being cleared of hindrances and made fit to bear the heavy traffic.