A single day's halt had enabled the officers to remove all the mud of the march; parade suits of uniform with fresh lace had been donned in lieu of old 'fighting jackets;' boots were polished and spurs burnished, and Schönforst wore a sword of which he was justly vain, as he had received it from the hands of King William after a battle in the campaign of 1866, when he was but a feldwebel, but won his silver shoulder-straps by bravery. On all sides the men were cleaning their muskets, cutting wood, lighting fires, carrying water from the stream, singing merrily, and many of them in chorus. 'Well, Schönforst,' said one of his guests, Herr Donnersberg, a thoughtless young fähnrich, 'I feel that I have an appetite--what is your speise-karte for to-day?' 'The bill of fare shows rather an omnium gatherum,' replied the Captain, thrusting nearly half a pound of tobacco into the bowl of his pipe; 'but the chief feature in it is a goose, now broiling on ramrods. One of our foragers gave it to me this morning for a couple of kreutzers and a bottle of cognac.' 'Excellent!' replied the other, 'though it is a bird, which an English gourmand said "was too much for one, but not quite enough for two." 'Here is my contribution to the repast,' said Heinrich, producing from his tent a square case bottle of prime Geneva 'per Johann de Kuy, Rotterdam,' which he had picked up somewhere on the march. 'So, as we have nothing better than Geneva and beer,' said the Captain, 'it will be useless to discuss the question as to the aroma of Veuve Clicquot, as compared with that of sparkling hock or Sillery.' 'Hock!' cried the other; 'wait till our drums are ringing among the vineyards of Champagne!' The goose was pronounced excellent, and soon disappeared with all Schönforst's own viands; the bowled pipes were again resorted to, and when Charlie produced a bottle of cognac from his tent, the serious business of the evening began, with the usual amount of rough military joking; and Schönforst was making them all laugh noisily and heartily, with an account of how Herr Major Rumpenfalz, just before the Westphalians marched, had married the frolicsome widow of a Hofrath, and on waking in the morning found his bride's golden hair on the toilette table, and her pearly teeth in the tumbler out of which the Herr Major was about to take his matutinal draught of cold water. While they were still laughing at this, or rather at the manner in which Schönforst related it, an officer who was passing suddenly paused, and-- 'A glass with you, gentlemen!' 'With pleasure,' replied Schönforst, handing him a bumper of brandy and water.