"God bless my soul!--Pardon me; I did not know any one was here."
"The devil you didn't!" was my blunt rejoinder.
And there, with gold glasses on his long aristocratic nose, and in his richly-tasselled _robe de chamber_ and embroidered slippers, stood my Lord Pottersleigh, whom I knew not to be at Walcot Park, as he had been nursing his gout upstairs; and now I wished his lordship in a hotter climate than the quarters of the 2nd West India for his unwelcome interruption. Of what he had seen or what he thought I cared not a rush, so far as _he_ was concerned; and a few minutes later saw me, after a hurried farewell to all, with the pleasure of remembered kisses on my lips, and my heart full of mingled joy and sadness, triumph and prayerful hope for the perilous future, flying at full gallop back to Winchester.
"Weather bit your chain, and cast loose the topsails!" cried a hoarse voice, rousing me from a reverie into which I had fallen--one of those waking-dreams in which I am so apt to indulge.
By this time the quarter-boats had been hoisted in, and the anchor got up "reluctant from its oozy cave"--no slight matter in the great troopship Urgent--when there was a stiff breeze even under the lee of the Isle of Wight; and as her head pitched into the sea, the water rushed through the hawse-holes, and the chain cables surged in such a fashion as almost to start the windlass-barrel when it revolved beneath the strength of many sturdy arms, and tough, though bending, handspikes. Leaning over the taffrail, and looking at the dim outline of the coast of Hampshire from St. Helen's Roads, to which two tugs had brought us from the great tidal dock at Southampton to a temporary anchorage, and seeing Portsmouth, with its spires and shipping steeped in a golden evening haze, I recalled the events of the past bustling day--could it be that only _a day_ had passed?--since "the first bugle sounded after _réveil_," and all our detachments, five in number, destined for the army of the East had paraded amid the gray light of dawn, in the barrack-square at Winchester, in heavy marching order, with packs, blankets, and kettles, and marched thence, their caps and muskets decked with laurel-leaves, the drums and fifes playing many a patriotic air, accompanied by the cheers of our comrades, and the tears of the girls who were left behind us--the girls "who doat upon the military."