he sees a man dying, it's 'Can I pray with you, my lad?'
I've seen him many a time praying, with not a dry eye
near,--tears in his eyes and ours. It don't matter if there is a
clergyman or anyone else present, if he sees a man very ill he
will pray with him. He _is_ a lord!"

Whether in this story there is any slight touch of soldierly
imaginativeness, I cannot tell, but happy is the general about whom
his men write in such a fashion; and happy is the army controlled by
such a head!

[Sidenote: _President Steyn's Sjambok._]

On the Friday evening, a few hours before our arrival, President Steyn
stood in the drift of the Kroonstad stream, sjambok in hand, seeking
to drive back the fleeing Boers to their new-made and now deserted
trenches; but the President's sjambok proved as unavailing as Mrs
Partington's heroic broom. The Boer retreat had grown into a rout; and
the President's own retirement that night was characterised by more of
despatch than dignity. He is reported to have said, "Better a Free
State ruined than no Free State at all." For its loss of freedom, and
for its further ruin, no living man is so responsible as he. But for
his sympathy and support the Boers would have made less haste in the
penning of their Ultimatum, and war might still have slept. =Steyn's
ambition awoke it!=

Whilst its President-protector fled, Kroonstad that night found itself
face to face with pandemonium let loose. The great railway bridge over
the Valsch was blown up with a terrific crash. The new goods station
belonging to the railway, recently built at a cost of L5000, and
filled with valuable stores, including food stuffs, was drenched with
paraffin by the =Boer Irish Brigade=, and given to the flames; while
five hundred sacks of Indian corn piled outside shared the same fate.
No wonder that, as at Bloemfontein, the arrival of the Guards' Brigade
was welcomed with ringing cheers, and the frantic waving by many a
hand of tiny Union Jacks. Our coming was to them the end of anarchy.

It is however worthy of note that the Boers who thus gave foodstuffs
to the flames, and strove continually to tear up the rails along
which food supplies arrived, yet left their wives and children for us
to feed. About that they had no compunctions and no fear, in spite of
the fabled horrors ascribed to British troops. They knew full well
that even if those troops were half starved, these non-combatants
would not be suffered to l