Baynell, still uncomfortably conscious of the rancor he had roused, had taken his position in the centre, just the regulation twelve paces in front of the leading horses, with the music four paces distant from the right of the first gun. As the sound blared out gayly on the crisp, clear, vernal breeze, the glittering ranks, every soldier mounted on a strong, fresh steed, moved forward swiftly, with the gun-carriages and caissons each drawn by a team of six horses. The air was full of the tramp of hoofs and the clangor of heavy, revolving wheels, ever and anon punctuated by the sharp monition, "Obstacle!" as one of the giant oaks of the grove intervened and the direction of the march of a piece was obliqued. The efficiency of the battery was very evident. The drill was almost perfect, despite the difficulty of manoeuvring among the trees. But when the ranks passed from the grove they swept like a whirlwind over the open spaces of the adjoining pasture-lands, the whole battery swinging here and there in sharp turns, never losing the prescribed intervals of the relative distance of squads, and guns, and caissons--all like some single intricate piece of connected mechanism, impossible of disassociation in its several parts. Ever and anon the clear tenor tones of the captain rang out with a trumpet-like effect, and the refrain of the subalterns and non-commissioned officers commanding the sections followed in their various clamors, while the great whirling congeries of horses and men and wheels and guns obeyed the sound like some automatic creation of the ingenuity of man. Once the surgeon bent an attentive ear. "By sections--break from the right to march to left!" called the commander, with a sudden "catch" in the tones. "Caissons forward! Trot! March!" came from a different voice. "Section forward, guide left!" thundered a basso profundo. "March!" cried the captain, sharply. "March!" came the subaltern's echo. As the moving panorama turned and wheeled and shifted, the surgeon commented in a spirit of forecast:-- "If that fellow doesn't pay some attention to his bronchial tubes, they will pay some attention to him, and that promptly."