Not content with the light sprinkling of _down_ which nature had planted and was nurturing on my upper lip, I spared from my scanty pay a sum of one shilling and sixpence for a bushy pair of false moustaches, which, however, all my efforts to make stick proved futile: they only made me sneeze; so I was obliged to fall back upon the old toothbrush and square of Indian ink presented to me by Dorcas, wherewith to blacken my young crop, to make believe that I was more of a man than a boy. The regiment was divided into three detachments of two troops each, and I belonged to the first that marched out of our old quarters, including the band. A large crowd had collected to witness our departure. A deal of hand-shaking and clinging to the stirrups was going on as we filed out of the barrack-gate to the tune of "The girl I left behind me;" and many a tear was shed by those who, having made a short acquaintance with some of the men while they had been quartered here, were destined never to see them again; indeed, I recollect that four of the number that marched with me on that morning died, a few years after, of a fever that broke out in the camp at Chobham; the bones of eight were left to whiten in the death-vale, after the battle of Balaklava; and three were killed during the Indian revolt, whither they had gone, transferred, at their own request, to other regiments. Few, however, of the whole regiment were left when actions, disease, and the short-comings of the commissariat had done their work, at the conclusion of the Crimean campaign. But of this I shall write in due course, and proceed with my narrative and detachment on our line of march. As is customary on a regiment leaving quarters, hundreds of the "tag, rag, and bob-tail" followed us through the streets to the outskirts of the town, the last to leave us being the girls; and they would have trudged on, keeping our company as long as they could have held out, but for the order to "trot," which the trumpet sounded directly on leaving the street pavement.