l give us back
multiplied our own faintest vibration. Honesty is easy when we can
forget ourselves; and here, where the wind seemed to pluck the words
from the reader's mouth and carry them to the hills that matched them in
grandeur, they cut the last link between us and our selfish thoughts and
fears, imparting a sense of world-without-end, making us one with our
feathered clerk who, his red-brown wings folded, wove a thread of song
into the Psalm. In that texture of admonition and prayer are many
seizing pictures: man walking in a vain shadow and disquieting himself
in vain, heaping up riches, ignorant who shall gather them: man turned
to destruction: our secret sins set in the light of one countenance: a
displeasure in which we consume away: a wrathful indignation that can
make all our busy years as a tale that is told. The first thought in
each of us had been, "There, but for the grace of God, I lie"; but the
bird's song seemed so to chase away all shadows of self-pity that Death
appeared in his natural order with the wind and rain and sun; no more
unkind than they.

At a signal the bodies were placed in the earth. No hateful furniture;
clay against clay: they seemed almost to nestle in it. A trooper covered
one face with his handkerchief, his comrade shielded the other with a
branch of mimosa; and while the words flowed to an end we stood,
Dutchmen and Englishmen, our small quarrel for the moment forgotten,
face to face with clear truth and knowing for once the taste of
sincerity. It was a good prayer to pray, that at our own last hour we
should not fall from that charity for any pains of death.

It seemed a natural thing for us to shake hands with the Boers before we
turned to resume this game of hostility in which we stumbled upon such
great issues. It was a silent ride home, and I need not say that it went
sore against the grain with me to make my report to Lord Methuen and the
Intelligence Department respecting the position of the laager. My
thoughts were not upon compass bearings and distances, but in the
sun-steeped basin where the grave was; and all day long I had a picture
in my mind of two groups of men united in one human emotion, but now
seeking each others' lives. At night, long after the camp slept, I lay
awake with the echo of the graveside "last post" ringing in my ears,
and, because of the appetite for effect that afflicts us in weak
moments, I was teased and worried by a sense of incompleteness. I