Our men were all in their greatcoats, with their white belts outside; and, save when a section or so started angrily to arms, as those fellows in the abattis became more annoying, they sat quietly on the ground or against the wall of the trench, smoking, chatting with perfect equanimity, and occasionally taking a sip of rum or raki from their canteens; for, after weeks and months of this kind of duty, especially after the severity of the Crimean war set in, our older soldiers seemed utterly indifferent as to whether they lived or died. All of them, even such boys as Tom Clavell, had been front to front with death, again and again. Among ourselves, even, there was an incessant scramble for food; hence in the expression of their faces and eyes there was something hard, set, fierce, and undefinable--half-wolfish at times, devil-may-care always; for in a few weeks after the landing at Eupatoria, they had seen more and lived longer than one can do in years upon years of a life of peace. "What do you see, Hugh, that you look so earnestly to the front?" I asked of Price, who was lying on his breast with a rifle close beside him, and his field-glass, to which his eyes were applied, wedged in a cranny between two sand-bags. "A Russian devil has made a bolt out of the abattis into yonder hole made by a shell." "And what of that?" "I am waiting to pot him, as he can't stay there long," replied Price, usually the best of good-natured fellows, but now looking with a tiger-like stare through the same lorgnette which he had used on many a day at the Derby, and many a night at the opera; "there he comes," he added. In a moment the Minie rifle, already sighted, was firmly at the shoulder of Price, who fired; a mass like a gray bundle, with hands and arms outspread, rolled over and over again on the ground, and then lay still; at _another_ time it might have seemed most terribly still! "Potted, by Jove!" exclaimed Hugh, as he restored the rifle to Sergeant Rhuddlan, and quietly resumed his cigar. "A jolly good shot, sir, at four hundred yards," added the non-commissioned officer, as he proceeded to reload and cap.