Recruiting was going on vigorously all over the country.

Horses were being bought up, and efforts made to place the attenuated regiments on a war footing.

All this was tantalizing news to the Twenty-eighth.

The colonel was known to have written to influential friends in London, begging them to urge upon the authorities the folly of allowing a fine regiment like his to leave the country at such a moment.

But little was hoped from this, for at any moment a change in the weather might place them beyond the possibility of a recall.
Three weeks passed and then the barometer fell, and there were signs of a change.