In the mean time the Highlanders, regardless of their wounds, their fatigues, their dangers, and their sufferings, kept throwing up their Highland bonnets into the air, and continually vociferating,--"Boney's beat! Boney's beat! hurrah! hurrah! Boney's beat!" Their tumultuous joy attracted round them a number of old Flemish women, who were extremely curious to know the cause of this uproar, and kept gabbling to the soldiers in their own tongue. One of them, more eager than the rest, seized one of the men by his coat, pulling at it, and making the most ludicrous gestures imaginable to induce him to attend to her; while the Highlander, quite forgetting in his transport that the old woman did not understand Scotch, kept vociferating that "Boney was beat, and rinning away till his ain country as fast as he could gang." At any other time, the old Flemish woman, holding the soldier fast, shrugging up her shoulders, and making these absurd grimaces, and the Highlander roaring to her in broad Scotch would have presented a most laughable scene--"Hout, ye auld gowk," cried the good-humoured soldier, "dinna ye ken that Boney's beat--what, are ye deef?--dare say the wife--I say Boney's beat, woman!" When the news was explained to the old women they were in an ecstasy almost as great as that of the Highlanders themselves, and the joy of the old valet was quite unbounded. These poor men were on their way to the hospital, but they did not know which way to go; they were ignorant of the language, and could not inquire. I thought of sending the valet de place with them, who was extremely willing to conduct "ces bons Ecossois," as he called them, but then I could not easily have found my own way home; so the valet de place, the soldiers, and I, all went to the hospital together. Our progress was slow, for one of them was very lame, another had lost three of the fingers of his right hand, and had a ball lodged in his shoulder. Some of them were from the Highlands, and some from the Lowlands, and when they found that I came from Scotland, and lived upon the Tweed, they were quite delighted. One of them was from the Tweed as well as myself, he said, "he cam' oot o' Peeblesshire."