rabbit the men caught-and bring back the pickles. Major, you really should not come at half-past seven when dinner is at six."

Upon my word, it is too bad," the major replied; "but, you see, it was for all the world like going back to Tirah. I was out with Colonel Rose to locate a place for a heliograph, and suddenly we were being sniped. We had two of Rimington's men with us, and one was copped, and the other had his horse shot, and then he was bowled over himself, dead as a doornail." "By Jove! you don't say?"

"But I do, and I was an hour getting help, and getting the body away. However, we got it, and here we are, thank God, and I'm none the worse, though they did give us a surprise-that I can swear. Why, how do you do, Mr. Daily Mail? Thank you very much for the Nestors. 'Pon my word, I never can thank you enough. I was down to Boer tobacco when you sent them and I'm the man who swore that if any man smoked Boer tobacco in my club I'd cut him, if he was my best friend."

It was my pet dandy, and I had not recognised him the man I used to see at Orange River, in new khaki serge, with blazing stars on his

shoulders, with lustrous buttons, with gaiters and boots freshly dressed twice a day, with gloves the only man who wore gloves as far north as Orange River; with rings, and a jewelled flask, and a provoking habit of taking everybody to his tent to see his Pasteur filter and his aluminium eating kit; the dazzling dandy of Methuen's column.

And now-now that dandies are as extinct as dodoes is it any wonder I did not know him? His stars were gone. His buttons were dingy. His coat was stained, and the left-hand pocket was torn half-way down. His single eyeglass was as murky as a Whitechapel window in December. He had not shaved for weeks. He was sitting on splinters, and leaning on Cape jam, and he didn't care. He was like the rest of us-dirty, shabby, unkempt, unshorn. He was capable of writing to the Hon. Lady Anne Broadstairs, but not of letting her see him. He was like the rest of us, blending with the veldt, melting into the desert colour, going without a razor, a bath, or a brush of any sort. But he was none the worse for that, and, pray God, may no one think any of us are.

"I always shave before going into action," said

the colonel, "on account of the example to the men."

"I used to," said the major, "till the men stole my razors. But, 'pon honour, old man, I do wash. I washed all over-let me see when it was. Oh, yes, it was at Honey Nest Kloof, the day before Modder River fight. I got two buckets, and went out two hundred yards away from the camp, and I stripped and--no, first I washed my undershirt and shirt in one pail, and then I washed myself. It was a rude shock to me, but no harm came of it."

CHAPTER XXI

THE PADRE AND OUR FRIEND THE ENEMY

'HE man of us all who knew the foe best was

TH man us all,

Padre Robertson, chaplain of the Highland Brigade, welcome mess-fellow with valiant Wauchope, man among men, and man of God.

Towards the close of each battle, before the Boers had done killing us, and before we had stopped firing at nothing all day long, Padre Robertson mounted a horse and rode over to the enemy's lines to ask permission to gather in our dead and wounded.

"I knew they wouldn't harm me," he said to me once, "because they could see by my riding right up to them that I was either a minister or a madman."

Ah, but there's good stuff in our padres! Think of the behaviour of the one called Hill at Belmont. The Grenadiers were still scaling the

steep and rocky kopje like flies, and the leaden drift of bullets was still whistling down from the Boer eyries as the wind of a gale searches the deck and rigging of a ship. But Padre Hill was there, moving from man to man, lifting a head here, and giving water there, and, once, actually standing up, book in hand, reading the office for the dying.

"Go back, padre, go back!" said an officer, "this is no place for a man of your calling; you've no right to risk your life here."

"No," said he, "I'm in my right place here."

But, as I was about to say, Padre Robertson went over to the Boer lines either three or four days after the battle of Maagersfontein, and got to know more about the enemy in action than any man I have yet seen. He told me that there were Englishmen, Irishmen, and Scotchmen among them, as well as the mercenary Germans and Scandinavians, serving for a gold Kruger a day—which is to say a pound sterling Dutch. He found ministers among them of the Reformed Presbyterian, or Dutch Reformed, faith, who got their professional training in Scotland. Everybody was courteous to our padre, and he found many well-dressed men of polished manners, distinctly men of the better