Captains, to your companies then! Close up there on the musqueteers, with three paces between each line.

Scythesmen, take ground to your left.

Let the under-officers stand on the flanks and rear.

So! 'tis smartly done for a first venture, though a good adjutant with a prugel after the Imperial fashion might find work to do.' Whilst we were thus rapidly and effectively organising ourselves into a regiment, other bodies of peasantry more or less disciplined had marched into the market-square, and had taken up their position there.

Those on our right had come from Frome and Radstock, in the north of Somersetshire, and were a mere rabble armed with flails, hammers, and other such weapons, with no common sign of order or cohesion save the green boughs which waved in their hat-bands.