Then on and on, hour after hour, halting ten minutes each hour for a needed breather and rest, until Ostend hove in sight. Visions of a comfortable billet rose before one's luxurious mind, but no such luck; right through the city we marched, finding the station square crammed with terror-stricken and most wretched-looking refugees; until, some four miles out, we lighted upon the most filthy and forsaken place to be found on the map of civilization--Steene. The houses were so vile and malodorous, that it was with great reluctance the O.C. allowed the men to enter. By this time it was very dark and very cold, and it was with purely animal instinct that we found the way to our mouths in the darkness, and tried to make believe that we enjoyed the biscuit and bully beef which formed our rations. Then came the somewhat important question of where to sleep. I deemed myself among the fortunate in securing a stretcher, and dossed in a transport wagon; a tired man might have a worse bed than that, and I slept the sleep of the weary and, as I would fain hope, of the righteous. The following morning, as it seemed likely that we should remain at Steene for at least another day, I cast round for something more comfortable in the way of a billet, and had secured three rooms at the worthy Burgomaster's for the O.C., Mr. Jaffray and myself, and was about to enjoy a more or less comfortable tea in the open, when an orderly rode up with orders to trek back to Bruges. In a few minutes the camp was struck, and once more we moved on. I felt that I could enter into the spirit of the well-known refrain-- The brave old Duke of York, He had ten thousand men. He marched them up to the top of a hill, And he marched them down again. And when they were up, they were up; And when they were down, they were down: And when they were half-way up the hill, They were neither up or down. As we retraced our steps through Ostend, we found a large and acclaiming crowd lining the route. As I rode just behind the Gordons, who were marching with their usual swinging step, I was amused to hear a Belgian woman ask her friend, 'And who are those?' pointing to the Highlanders. 'Oh,' was the reply, 'those are the wives of the English soldiers.' The gay Gordons were greatly incensed on my setting before them their new status. In the centre of the city I came across my friend Peel (padre of the 22nd Brigade; he has since won a military cross, and gained the universal love of his men by his gallant conduct and splendid ministry). He had somehow or other lost his Brigade, and being thus stranded, had slung his batman up behind him on his horse and was proceeding with unruffled dignity in the direction of the line of march.