d helped
ourselves (with their permission) to oranges and tangerines, while one
good lady gave me a couple of eggs, which I enjoyed later for tea. Then
gaily bidding them _Auf Wiedersehen_ we retraced our way and came to
where the camp had been established. Arrived there, the stories we heard
concerning the affair were, as you can imagine, marvellous. And, after
all, what do you think the wily Boer bagged as the result of such a
lovely death trap? Not a man. Half-a-dozen horses were shot, and I
daresay some cattle. My rolled overcoat also had a rip suspiciously like
a bullet mark. Once again Boer wiliness had been rendered ineffectual
owing to execrable marksmanship. It seems like ingratitude to thus
criticise their shooting, but it cannot go without comment.

On Monday, the August Bank Holiday, we did not shift camp, and had the
luxury of a late _reveille_ (6 a.m.), and opportunities for very
necessary washes and shaves, and such domestic duties as repairing rents
in our breeches and tunics, and a little laundry work. Some of your
"gentlemen rovers abroad" are finding that sewing the tears in one's
tunic is a far different and more difficult matter than sowing one's
wild oats at home. Owing to having baked the back of one of my boots in
drying it at a fire, after my fourth immersion in a bog, I have had
rather a bad heel, but am easier in that vulnerable part now, having cut
out the back of the boot.

On Tuesday, B-P. very unwillingly evacuated Rustenburg, and we marched
back in the direction of Pretoria.

I don't think, in spite of my verbosity, I have made any particular or
direct allusion to our friend, the mule, so here I will make slight
amends. Alas, he lost the little reputation he possessed at Nicholson's
Nek, but to give the mule his due he is a hard worker--he has to be--he
is born in bondage and dies in bondage (there is no room out here for
the R.S.P.C.A.), and the golden autumn of a hard-lived life is not for
the likes of him. He does not appear to get much to eat, though he will
eat anything, as I found to my cost one night when in charge of the
stable guard. A friend had lent me two _Graphics_, which I left on my
blanket for a few minutes while I went the rounds. On my return I found
a mule contentedly eating one of them--I only just managed to save half
of it. When in camp, the Cape Boys, in whose charge they are, usually
tie some of them to the wheels of the waggons, ammunition and water
carts, the