, and
the fat and hearty old woman bundled off to her farm, protesting
loudly_).

But although such incidents are sometimes amusing they are often
painful, and the burning of houses that has gone on this afternoon has
been a most unpleasant business. We have been marching through a part of
the country where some mischievous person has been collecting and
encouraging insurgents. And this afternoon in the course of about ten
miles we have burned no less than six farmhouses. Care seems to have
been taken that there was proper evidence against the owners who were
absent. In one case the wife of an insurgent who was lying sick at a
friend's farm, watched from her sick husband's bedside the burning of
her home a hundred yards away. I cannot think that punishment need take
this wild form; it seems as though a kind of domestic murder were being
committed while one watches the roof and furniture of a house blazing;
and how many obscure deaths of the soul take place while a woman
watches her home, and all the little valueless possessions that are
precious to her, falling into ruin before her eyes? I stood till late
last night before the red blaze, and saw the flames lick round each
piece of the poor furniture--the chairs and tables, the baby's cradle,
the chest of drawers containing a world of treasure; and when I saw the
poor housewife's face pressed against the window of the neighbouring
house my own heart burned with a sense of outrage. The crime of
insurrection is a serious one, but I never heard yet of a crime for
which the responsibility rested on the criminal alone.

On quite different grounds, this destruction would appear to be worse
than useless. The effect on those of the Colonial troops who, in
carrying out the orders to destroy, are gratifying their feelings of
hatred and revenge, is very bad. Their discipline is far below that of
the Imperial troops, and they soon get out of hand. They swarm into the
houses, looting and destroying, and filling the air with high-sounding
cries of vengeance, and yesterday some of them were complaining bitterly
that a suspected house, against the owner of which there was not
sufficient evidence, was not delivered into their hands. Further, if
these farms are to be confiscated (as the more revengeful loyalists
desire) and given over to settlers, why burn the houses? The new
occupant will only have to build another homestead, and building is a
serious matter where wood and the means of