trains,
under the famous Girouard, were working furiously at the repair of the
damage which he had already done. This time the guard was sufficient
to beat him off, and he vanished again to the eastward. He succeeded,
however, in doing some harm, and very nearly captured Lord Kitchener
himself. A permanent post had been established at Rhenoster under the
charge of Colonel Spens of the Shropshires, with his own regiment and
several guns. Smith-Dorrien, one of the youngest and most energetic
of the divisional commanders, had at the same time undertaken the
supervision and patrolling of the line.

An attack had at this period been made by a commando of some hundred
Boers at the Sand River to the south of Kroonstad, where there is a
most important bridge. The attempt was frustrated by the Royal Lancaster
regiment and the Railway Pioneer regiment, helped by some mounted
infantry and Yeomanry. The fight was for a time a brisk one, and the
Pioneers, upon whom the brunt of it fell, behaved with great steadiness.
The skirmish is principally remarkable for the death of Major Seymour
of the Pioneers, a noble American, who gave his services and at last his
life for what, in the face of all slander and misrepresentation, he knew
to be the cause of justice and of liberty.

It was hoped now, after all these precautions, that the last had been
seen of the gentleman with the tinted glasses, but on June 21st he was
back in his old haunts once more. Honing Spruit Station, about midway
between Kroonstad and Roodeval, was the scene of his new raid. On that
date his men appeared suddenly as a train waited in the station, and
ripped up the rails on either side of it. There were no guns at this
point, and the only available troops were three hundred of the prisoners
from Pretoria, armed with Martini-Henry rifles and obsolete ammunition.
A good man was in command, however--the same Colonel Bullock of the
Devons who had distinguished himself at Colenso--and every tattered,
half-starved wastrel was nerved by a recollection of the humiliations
which he had already endured. For seven hours they lay helpless under
the shell-fire, but their constancy was rewarded by the arrival of
Colonel Brookfield with 300 Yeomanry and four guns of the 17th R.F.A.,
followed in the evening by a larger force from the south. The Boers
fled, but left some of their number behind them; while of the British,
Major Hobbs and four men were killed and nineteen wounded. This