right,
where the enemy's main position lies, and disappear. There is a sharp,
rapid interchange of shots, and then the fire gradually lessens and dies
away, and the position is captured. They have lost a hundred men in ten
minutes, but they've done the trick.

Later on, Hamilton, one of the most beloved of our Generals, gallops
forward, and on the hill they have won, as evening is closing, says a
few words to the Gordons. "Men of the Gordons, officers of the Gordons,
I want to tell you how proud I am of you; of my father's old regiment,
and of the regiment I was born in. You have done splendidly. To-morrow
all Scotland will be ringing with the news." This charge will, no doubt,
take rank as one of the most brilliant things of the war.

Next morning at dawn, escorting the cow-guns, I came to where the Boers
had held out so long among the scattered rocks. The Gordons were burying
some of the Boer dead. There were several quite youngsters among them.
One was a boy of not more than fourteen, I should think, like an English
schoolboy. One of the Gordons there told me he saw him, during the
advance, kneeling behind a stone and firing. He was shot through the
forehead. There is something pathetic and infinitely disagreeable in
finding these mere children opposed to one.

These infantry advances are the things that specially show up the
courage of our troops. Each man, walking deliberately and by himself, is
being individually shot at for the space of ten minutes or more, the
bullets whistling past him or striking the ground near him. To walk
steadily on through a fire of this sort, which gets momentarily hotter
and better aimed as he diminishes the distance between himself and the
enemy, in expectation every instant of knowing "what it feels like," is
the highest test of courage that a soldier in these days can give.
Nothing the mounted troops are, as a rule, called upon to perform comes
near it. Knowing exactly from experience what lay in front of them,
these Gordons were as cool as cucumbers. As they lay among the stones
with us before beginning the advance, I spoke to several, answering
their questions and pointing them out the lie of the ground and the
Boer position. You could not have detected the least trace of anxiety or
concern in any of them. The front rank, when the order to advance was
given, stepped down with a swing of the kilt and a swagger that only a
Highland regiment has. "Steady on the left;" they took thei