Outside in the park, under the trees that the hoar-frost loads, the brigade band favours us with the liveliest melodies from _Bric-à-brac_, _The Girl in the Taxi_ and, above all, those _Bing Boys_, who seem fated to eclipse _Tipperary_ itself in the general favour. It is three degrees below freezing-point. All round the band they have had to set a circle of braziers. I am on the General's left, a particular distinction which I purchase at the cost of sitting with my back against an open window, where I become the sport of a whole battlefield of draughts. But it is a cheap price for the company of General Vaughan Campbell. This is one of the most popular men in the British Army. He must surely be the youngest of its Generals, for he is not yet 38. This very month King George has still further swelled the number of his orders by giving him the Victoria Cross. Only 250 men in the whole Army can boast of this honour. The man's quality is evident. He is strength and good nature personified. With his rider's legs, his broad, short body, muscular yet supple, he is the picture of a sporting Englishman. The merry eye betrays the simple heart. The wind and the open-air life have tanned his face like a seaman's. He wears, moreover, an odd little cat's moustache, two red, bristling tufts, which makes one think of the traditional musketeers of Louis XIV. A little time ago I saw him run in a two-mile race against some of his younger Staff Officers. This General is a hero; a hero in that great style which glorifies every gallant action with the touch of chivalry. One evening in the trenches he performed a feat worthy of Roland. The story is well known. In September last General Vaughan Campbell was a Colonel in the Guards. His regiment held the first line, immediately next to the Germans. One evening the order came to attack at midnight. It fell to the Coldstreams to undertake this dangerous business. It was a sweet and tranquil autumn night. The men fought with sleep, harder to resist than any pain. But the hour for the attack had come. This Colonel has a knightly soul. He perceives that his men, far from their home, living for ever in holes, and mud and fog, sometimes lose their vision of the true meaning of this war. It is their souls that must be stirred. And the Colonel, who used to be the keenest Master of Fox Hounds in Shropshire, recollected that he had among his things a hunting-horn whose call was clearer than any cornet's. He got his men together, gave them the word to "go over," and then, jumping on to the parapet, blew "gone away" with the full strength of his lungs. As if in this fierce summons they heard the very voice of their own country, the Coldstreams, wild with delight, charged madly on the heels of this new Roland. The call of the horn sounded weirdly through the night above "No Man's Land." It is to these men like the bagpipes to the Highlander; a voice from the Homeland and the call of the Empire.