for up these
heights under similar circumstances, even a brigade of devils could
scarce have hoped to pass. All that mortal man could do the Scots did;
they tried, they failed, they fell, and there is nothing left us now
but to revere their memory and give them a place of honour in the
pages of history.

6. Three hundred yards to the rear of the little township of Modder
River, just as the sun was sinking in a blaze of African splendour, on
the evening of Tuesday, the 12th of December, a long shallow grave lay
exposed in the breast of the veldt. To the westward, the broad river
fringed with trees runs murmuringly; to the eastward, the heights
still held by the enemy, scowled menacingly; north and south the veldt
undulated peacefully; a few paces to the northward of that grave,
fifty dead Highlanders lay dressed as they had fallen on the field of
battle: they had followed their chief to the field, and they were to
follow him to the grave.

7. How grim and stern these men looked as they lay face upward to the
sky, with great hands clutched in the last agony, and brows still knit
with the stern lust of the strife in which they had fallen. The
plaids, dear to every Highland clan, were represented there, and out
of the distance came the sound of pipes. It was the General coming to
join his men. There, right under the eyes of the enemy, moved with
slow and solemn tread all that remained of the Highland Brigade. In
front of them walked the chaplain, with bared head, dressed in his
robes of office; then came the pipers with their pipes, sixteen in
all, and behind them, with arms reversed, moved the Highlanders,
dressed in all the regalia of their regiments, and in the midst the
dead General, borne by four of his comrades. Out swelled the pipes to
the strains of "The Flowers of the Forest," now ringing proud and high
until the soldier's head went back in haughty defiance--and eyes
flashed through tears like sunlight on steel, now sinking to moaning
wail like a woman mourning for her first-born, until the proud heads
drooped forward till they rested on heaving chests, and tears rolled
down the wan and scarred faces, and the choking sobs broke through the
solemn rhythm of the march of death.

8. Right up to the grave they marched, then broke away in companies,
until the General lay in the shallow grave with a Scottish square of
armed men around him. Only the dead man's son and a small remnant of
his officers stood with the ch