"Ah, the mess!" sighed Buckle, the adjutant; "when we come to be frying our ration beef in a camp-kettle lid, under a shower of rain, perhaps, there will be an exchange with a devil of a difference!" With the aforesaid "cooper" there came in hot whisky-toddy for the major and a few select seniors, for it was _then_ the custom at the messes of Scots and Irish national corps to introduce the Farintosh and potheen; though I fear our dandies of the Victorian age (especially such as are horrified at the sight of a black bottle) might consider such a proceeding a deplorable solecism in good taste. "And now, major, for your story," said Askerne, while Colville, perhaps the only affected man in the regiment, gave his shoulders a shrug, perceptible only by the glittering of his epaulettes, and Monkton responded by a sly wink behind his glass of wine, while he pretended to be looking for the beeswing. CHAPTER V. THE ADVANCED PICQUET. "All quiet along the Potomac, they say, Except now and then a stray picquet, Is shot as he walks on his beat to and fro, By a rifleman hid in the thicket. 'Tis nothing. A private or two now and then, Will not count in the tale of the battle; Not an officer lost--only one of the men, Breathing out all alone the death-rattle." "In the spring of the year '75, a party of ours, under Lord Rohallion, then a captain, was sent to the Fort of St. John, on the Richelieu River, to strengthen the garrison, which was composed of some companies of the 7th Fusiliers and the 26th, or Cameronians, under Major Preston, of Valleyfield, in Fifeshire, as gallant a fellow as ever bore the King's commission. "We were in daily expectation of the advance of the rebel General Montgomery, with a great force, so the duties of guards and sentinels were performed with great vigilance, as the whole country for miles around, if not actually in possession of the armed colonists, was full of people who were favourable to their cause, and were consequently inimical to the king and to us.