It
echoed through those empty, roofless halls with a weird sound, for at
that moment there was only an occasional growl of artillery in the air.
Everything else was strangely quiet. Needless to say, an uninhabited
town is never noisy, and at five o'clock in the morning it is not merely
not noisy but deadly still. Greatly astonished, I followed the sound
through a long succession of ruined rooms, until I came upon a soldier
with a broom, steadily sweeping the floor of a small empty room a little
off the main sacristy. He had a steel helmet upon his head, like myself.
Slowly and like a man in a dream he plied his work. He looked at me as
if I too were part of the dream, and when I asked him what his regiment
was, he answered with a sort of shadowy salute and in faint, far-away
tones, "The 52nd." I am bound to say I have never been more taken aback
than I was by that answer. It literally left me speechless--a record, my
friends tell me. The strangeness of the whole scene and the silence had
made me prepared for mysteries, but it was a little too much to be told
that _I_ was face to face with a man from one of the most famous of
the Peninsular regiments. It is unnecessary to say that no modern
soldier, asked his regiment, would now give its old numeral.
Pages:
480
481
482
483
484
485
486
487
488
489
490
491
492
493
494
495
496
497
498
499
500
501
502
503
504