Next a bullet-headed Tommy darted up from behind, and dropped beside the younger correspondent. Just Heaven! how he was sworn at and abused, as a new hail of bullets showered around the three, attracted by his dash across the veldt.

"If you would pull in that blooming tin pail, and put it under your tummy, you wouldn't git so much o' the blooming bullets. It shoines loike a heliograph." He was right. He referred to a two-quart, bright, new tin water-bottle, which the elder man had left beside him on the ground.

Of all the sublimated fools in any army, this Tommy was the worst. He next asked for a drink, and, taking a covered bottle, raised himself on his elbows, put up his high, and began to quaff.

head, lifted the bottle A thousand rifle balls

and ten minutes' play of the " putt-putt" showed that this had been accepted as a challenge. Again Tommy was sworn at for an idiot-and what was his reply?

"I know it. When I was loying hover there be'ind a hant-'ill, I 'eld up me blooming 'elmet, an' got a 'ole put through it before I could get it down again."

He was quieted by the impressive assurance that

he would get a pistol ball through his skull at the next provocation, and for another half-hour he lay still. Then suddenly he said—

"Gents, I'm blimed tired of planting me nose in the sand, and waiting for it to sprout. What I say is, let's run for it, each one in a different direckshin, so the blooming Boers won't know which to peg at."

"You're a general, Tommy," said the correspondents; "we're with you.'

He gave the word. All three ran like mad in different ways, and the Boers directed their fire on the young and handsome correspondent. It was dusk, and jets of flame sprang out of the veldt all round him. But he was not hit,

CHAPTER XXVII

AN OPEN LETTER TO A FIELD-CORNET

To Hermanus Swigelaar, Esq., Boer Farmer, FieldCornet, of Ramdam, Orange Free State.

MODDER RIVER, Feb. 6th.

DEAR SIR,-You know how a man will sometimes leave a little thing behind him when he says goodbye-his goloshes, or umbrella, or gloves.

Well, when I called on you in my Cape cart with a bit of the British army, and you chanced not to be at home, I came away without my cart.

You may have been surprised, but I've seen men and women do more than that. I was walking about Havana once when everybody of both sexes left everything they had, and came out of the houses in just their complexions-but that was because an earthquake occurred at precisely eleven in the morning, when they were all in their baths.

The cart I overlooked is what is called a "cooper cart," and there is not a better in the country, so that it is absurd for you to think I left it as a present to a total stranger, or because I did not want it.

I asked your neighbour across the border, Colonel Macbean, of the Gordon Highlanders, to fetch it away with him, whenever he went to pay his courtesy call in return for our entertainment during the four-and-twenty hours we spent on your farm, when you were not at home. He now writes me that you have taken my cart to Jacobsdal, and that I must address all further correspondence on the subject to you. Colonel Macbean doubtless thinks himself a humourist, but you observe that I am taking his advice seriously.

I want my cart or fifty pounds-in sovereigns, not Krugers.

I had just as lief you should keep the cart, because it would serve as proof that I have been in your country, and know what I am writing about; therefore please bring the money to me in Lord Methuen's camp. We shall all be glad to see you, and may probably press you to stay with us -till the war is over.

I was much interested in your district. It is the

first corner of the enemy's country that I have visited, except Cape Colony. I like the Free State

-a little. It is the worst place but one this side of the Sudan, the very worst being the region where Lord Methuen has been fighting. There was a suggestion of green herbage and foliage in your desert, and I was grateful for that.

What a queer people you are to call yourselves farmers when you are in reality a mere lot of cow-boys!

Take your own "farm," for example, which appears to be the entire valley that surrounds you. A couple of miles from your house is a barbed wire enclosure given up to corn, figs, mulberries, and peaches-a place the size of an ordinary vegetable garden in Finchley or Upper Norwood. Such a patch constitutes a man a farmer, it appears, though the rest of your valley is precisely as God made it, and your real business, like that of the Afridis, Turks, Servians, Albanians, and all other such folk, is cattle herding.

The more I saw of Boer homes and surroundings the less I liked your people. I hope you don't mind my saying so.

The little group of poplars in front of your house made the place very inviting from a distance,