However, we were a very jolly party at Sofia, where a fresh lot of English surgeons chummed in with us, and we all resolved to celebrate Christmas in the proper English way by a splendid dinner. On Christmas Eve a special sub-committee was formed to arrange the details of a banquet which should be worthy of the occasion. We were going to have no more of the eternal pilaf, with its accompanying hard biscuit and gulps of hot black coffee, but a real hot joint, a turkey, a goose, a plum pudding, and plenty of wine. I went to sleep that night with my soul filled with beautiful dreams of Christmas, and peace on earth, goodwill towards Bulgarians, and of roast turkey and celery sauce. In the morning I woke, and learned with horror that the regiment was ordered to march at once to the bleak, detestable pass of Orkhanieh in the Balkans, and that we should probably get no dinner at all. They went away without me, and as Christmas morning wore on I came to the conclusion that I had better follow them or else I might get lost. I did follow them, but I got lost all the same; and after riding until ten o'clock at night I reached a filthy Bulgarian village, and decided to camp there. The house which I selected as the most promising was about as clean as an English piggery; but I found a kind of loft where maize was stored in the cob, and there I stopped for the night. I lay on the cobs of maize which were as hard as paving-stones, and made my Christmas dinner off one of them, hardly knowing whether to curse or laugh at the irony of fate and the "happy Christmas" which my friends in England and Australia no doubt were wishing me. Next day I overtook the regiment, and went into quarters with it for five weeks at Orkhanieh. I had plenty to do there, for the men suffered greatly from dysentery; and as they could not all be accommodated in the village, they had to live under canvas, a mode of life which was very severe at that time of the year. After a few weeks there my stock of medicines, which was never very large, began to run out, and I got permission from the colonel to ride into Sofia, a distance of thirty miles, to replenish the regimental medicine chest. Of all my campaigning experiences none were more awful than those lonely rides from Orkhanieh to Sofia and back again. My horse went lame soon after I started, the cold was intense, and in half an hour I was overtaken by a snowstorm which nearly blinded me. All day my poor horse hobbled along on three legs, while I was afraid to dismount, knowing that if I once left the saddle I should be frozen to death on the ground. When I arrived in Sofia at ten o'clock that night, I had to be lifted off my horse and put to bed. In the morning my good horse was found dead in the stable, killed by that fearful journey. An Italian doctor, who drove into Sofia on the same day, was lifted out of the vehicle dead. Perhaps if he had ridden he might have been saved.