“Next to a battle lost, nothing is so dreadful as a battle won,” said Wellington, at the end, too, of his most triumphant day.  The slaughter is a sad set-off against the glory; groans of anguish are the converse of exulting cheers.  The field of conquest was stained with the life’s blood of thousands.  The dead lay all around; some on their backs, calmly sleeping as though death had inflicted no pangs; the bodies of others were writhed and twisted with the excruciating agony of their last hour.  The wounded in every stage of suffering strewed the ground, mutilated by round shot and shell, shattered by grape, cut and slashed and stabbed by bayonet and sword.

Their cries, the loud shriek of acute pain, the long-drawn moan of the dying, the piercing appeal of those conscious, but unable to move, filled every echo, and one of the first and most pressing duties for all who could be spared was to afford help and succour.

Now the incompleteness of the subsidiary services of the English army became more strikingly apparent.  It possessed no carefully organised, well-appointed ambulance trains, no minutely perfect field-hospitals, easily set up and ready to work at a moment’s notice; medicines were wanting; there was little or no chloroform; the only surgical instruments were those the surgeons carried, while these indispensable assistants were by no means too numerous, and already worked off their legs.

Parties were organised by every regiment, with stretchers and water-bottles, to go over the field, to carry back the wounded to the coast, and afford what help they could.  The Royal Picts, like the rest, hasten to send assistance to their stricken comrades.  The bandsmen, who had taken no part in the action, were detailed for the duty, and the sergeant-major, at his own earnest request, was put in charge.

As they were on the point of marching off, General Wilders rode up.  He had been separated, it will be remembered, from part of his brigade, and had still but a vague idea of how it had fared in the fight.

“I saw nothing of you, colonel, during the action.  Worse luck I went with the wrong lot, on the right of the village.”

“It is well some of the regiment escaped what we went through,” said Colonel Blythe, sadly.  “My left wing was nearly cut to pieces.  I was never under such a fire.”

“How many have you lost, do you suppose?”

“We are now mustering the regiment:  a sorrowful business enough.  Seven officers are missing.”

“What are their names?”

“Popham, Smart, Drybergh, Arrowsmith—­”

“Anastasius—­my young cousin—­is he safe?” hastily interrupted the general.

Colonel Blythe shook his head.

“I missed him half way up the hill; he was carrying the regimental colour, but when we got into the battery it was in the sergeant-major’s hands.  I wish to bring his—­the sergeant-major’s—­conduct especially before your notice, general.”