It was now asserted that we should not assault Sebastopol until the arrival of fresh reinforcements, which were expected by the way of Constantinople in a few weeks. There were said to be fifteen thousand French, and our own 97th, or Earl of Ulster's, and 99th Lanarkshire coming from Greece, with the 28th from Malta; but that we were likely to _winter_ before the besieged city was now becoming pretty evident to the Allies, and none of us liked the prospect, the French perhaps least of all, with the freezing memories of their old Russian war and the retreat from flaming Moscow still spoken of in their ranks; and the cruel and taunting boast of the Emperor Nicholas concerning Russia's two most conquering generals--January and February. So when the wood for the erection of huts began to arrive at Balaclava, and the winter siege became a prospect that was inevitable, I thought of having a wigwam built for myself and two other officers; and confess that as the season advanced, some such habitation would have been more acceptable than my bell-tent, which, like much more of our warlike gear, had probably lain in some of John Bull's shabby peace-at-any-price repositories since Waterloo, and was all decaying. Hence the door was always closed with difficulty, especially on cold nights, the straps being rotten and the buckles rusty. Add to this, that our camp-bedding and clothes were alike dropping to pieces--the result of constant wet and damp. Already no two soldiers in our ranks were clad alike; they looked like well-armed vagrants, and wore comically-patched clothing, with caps of all kinds, gleaned off the late field or near the burial trenches. Some of the Rifles, in lieu of dark green, were fain to wear smocks made by themselves from old blankets, and leggings made of the same material or old sacking, and many linesmen, who were less fortunate, had to content them with the rags of their uniforms. Happy indeed were the Highlanders, who had no trousers that wore out. Alas for those to whom a flower in the button-hole, kid gloves, glazed boots, and Rimmel's essences, were as the necessaries of life! But ere the wished-for materials for _my_ hut arrived, circumstances I could little have foreseen found me quarters in a very different place. Every other day I was again on duty in the trenches, and without the aid of my field-glass could distinctly see the dark groups of the enemy's outposts, extending from the right up the valley of Inkermann, towards Balaclava.