y meal off the straw coverings of a case of whisky
bottles. With an action that gives the least possible exertion; with the
digestion of an ostrich, and the eye of a pariah dog for any stray
morsel of food; with an extraordinary capacity for taking rest in
snatches, and recouping himself by a roll whenever you take his saddle
off; and of course, from the natural toughness of his constitution, too,
he is able to stand the long and gradual strain of being many hours
under the saddle every day (and perhaps part of the night, too) in a way
that unaccustomed horses cannot do. By this time we all know his
merits, and there is immense demand from every mounted corps for the
Boer ponies. The Major is up to his eyes in work, as officers and
orderlies come galloping up with requisitions from the various
regiments. He has the born horse lover's dislike for parting with a
really good horse except to a man he knows something about. Loud and
uproarious is the chaff and protestations (now dropping to confidential
mutterings) as the herds of horses are broken up and the various lots
assigned. As I say, it looks from the hilltop exactly like a west
country fair on an enlarged scale, and the great lonely Basuto
mountains, too, might seem a larger edition of the Exmoor hills around
Winsford. The Boer prisoners, poor fellows, have no eye for the
picturesque. They congregate together and grumble and watch the
distribution of their horses with a very sour expression.

From this point we sent our prisoners in, _via_ Winberg, to the railway,
the Major and most of the corps going with them as part of the escort;
while I with twenty men, consisting partly of Guides and partly of
Lovat's Scouts, was detached to continue as bodyguard to Hunter. He,
with the main column (we reunited at Bethlehem), marched to Lindley and
then here to Heilbron.

It was ten miles south of this that we came in contact with Olivier.
Olivier and De Wet had both broken through our cordon at different times
and escaped from the hills. Sent one morning with a message to the
Sussex outside Slabbert's Nek I saw shells bursting, and all the
appearance of a heavy fight going on over the hills to the north-west.
This was Christian De Wet, who with several guns and about 1500
well-mounted men, had made a dash for freedom when he found the place
was getting too hot, and had been promptly tackled by Broadwood when he
got outside. Pursuer and pursued vanished into the blue distance