an between the ages of sixteen and sixty was required to
place himself and his rifle at the service of the State. Even sons of
British parentage, being burghers, were not allowed to cross the
border and so escape this, in many a case, hateful obligation. Their
life was forfeit, if they sought to evade the dread duties of the
fighting line, and refused to level reluctant rifles against men
speaking the same mother tongue. Some few, however, secured the rare
privilege of acting simply as despatch riders, or as members of the
Boer ambulance corps.

[Sidenote: _A touching story._]

One of the sons of my Methodist farmer friend had been thus employed
at Magersfontein, but had now seized the first opportunity of taking
the oath and returning to his home. With his own lips he told me that
on that fatal field he had found the body of an English officer, in
whose cold hand lay an open locket, and in the locket two portraits;
one the portrait of a fair English lady, and the other that of a still
fairer English child. So, before the eyes of one dying on the
blood-stained veldt did visions of home and loved ones flit. Life's
last look turned thither! In war, the cost in cash is clearly the cost
that is of least consequence. Who can appraise aright the price of
that one locket?

Yet, appositely enough, as, that same evening, I was being driven back
to town in a buggy and four, a little maiden--perchance like the
maiden of the locket--wonderingly exclaimed as she watched the sun
sink in radiance behind a neighbouring hill: "Why! just look! The sky
is English!" "How so?" asked her father. "Can't you see?" said the
child; "it is all red, white, and blue!" which indeed it was!

[Sidenote: _The price of milk._]

But our title to this newly-conquered territory was by no means quite
so unchallenged as such a complacent and complimentary sky might have
led one to suppose. The heavens above us were for the moment English,
but scarcely the earth beneath us; and certainly not the land beyond
us. Great even thus far had been the price of conquest; but the full
sum was not yet ready for the reckoning. No new Magersfontein awaited
us, and no new Paardeberg; but the incessant risking of precious life,
and much loss thereof in other fashions than those of the battlefield.

Possibly one of the most distressing cases of that kind occurred only
two days after near Karee, a few miles beyond Bloemfontein. The
officers of the Guards had become fam