There was every reason to indulge in this pleasing belief; disorganization had extended to every branch of the service. An angry correspondence, in which even personal chastisement was broadly hinted at, passed between the two officers highest in command; and this not secretly, but publicly known to the entire army. Peculation of the most gross and open kind was practised by the commissaries; and as the troops became distressed by want, they retaliated by daring breaches of discipline, so that at every parade men stood out from the ranks, boldly demanding their rations, and answering the orders of the officers by insulting cries of “Bread! bread!” All this while the British were advancing steadily, overcoming each obstacle in turn, and with a force whose privations had made no inroad upon the strictest discipline; they felt confident of success. The few prisoners who occasionally fell into the hands of the French wore all the assurance of men who felt that their misfortunes could not be lasting, and in good-humored raillery bantered their captors on the British beef and pudding they would receive, instead of horseflesh, so soon as the capitulation was signed. The French soldiers were, indeed, heartily tired of the war; they were tired of the country, of the leaders, whose incompetency, whether real or not, they believed; tired, above all, of absence from France, from which they felt exiled. Each step they retired from the coast seemed to them another day's journey from their native land, and they did not hesitate to avow to their prisoners that they had no wish or care save to return to their country. Such was the spirit of the French army as it drew near Cairo, than which no greater contrast could exist than that presented by the advancing enemy. Let us now return to the more immediate interests of our story; and while we beg to corroborate the brief narrative of the French officer, we hope it is unnecessary to add that the individual whose suddenly changed fortune had elevated him from the ranks of a simple volunteer to that of a peer of England was our old acquaintance Dick Forester.