It was not till we were well on the march that I had leisure to look about me and notice how our force was increased.
Several now regiments were with us, and the commander-in-chief and his staff and heavy guns and siege trains accompanied the march.

With the exception of a few skirmishes, my master had yet to learn what a battle was.

We crept on, halting sometimes, and sometimes pushing on, until one jubilant afternoon the distant walls of Lucknow appeared in sight.
Then indeed our brave fellows began to breathe again.
To-morrow would bring them to the city walls, and--what was equally after their hearts--face to face with the enemy.

We bivouacked here for the night.
Now it happened on this particular night that my master was on sentinel duty for the first time in his life, and mightily proud of his charge.
There he stood as stiff as a poker, with his rifle at his side, and I verily believe would have thought nothing of running his bayonet through the body of the commander-in-chief if he had presented himself without the password.
Patrick was not a dreamer; and as he looked across in the direction of Lucknow I don't suppose his meditations were of the loftiest kind.

He knew there would be a fight to-morrow, and so he was happy; he knew duty might call him to action even to-night, and so he kept a very sharp look-out at his post; but otherwise his mind was profoundly untroubled.
It was not so with me.