Cohn felt not only _Gabbai_, but town councillor again.

This wonderful letter, of which S. Cohn distributed printed copies to
the staff of the Emporium with a bean-feast air, ran:

'We go out every day--I am speaking of my own squadron--each
officer taking his turn with twenty to fifty men, and sweep
round the farms a few miles out; and we seldom come back
without seeing Boers hanging round on the chance of a snipe at
our flanks, or waiting to put up a trap if we go too far. The
local commando fell on our cattle-guard the other day--a
hundred and fifty to our twenty-five--and we suffered; it was
a horrible bit of country. There was a young chap,
Winstay--rather a pal of mine--he had a narrow squeak, knocked
over by a shot in his breast. I managed to get him safe back
to camp--Heaven knows how!--and they made me a lance-corporal,
and the beggar says I saved his life; but it was really
through carrying a fat letter from his sister--not even his
sweetheart. We chaff him at missing such a romantic chance.
He got off with a flesh wound, but there is a great blot of
red ink on the letter. You may imagine we were not anxious to
let our comrades go unavenged. My superiors being sick or
otherwise occupied, I was allowed to make a night-march with
thirty-five men on a farm nine miles away--just to get square.
It was a nasty piece of work, as we were within a few miles of
the Boer laager, three hundred strong. There was moonlight,
too--it was like a dream, that strange, silent ride, with only
the stumble of a horse breaking the regular thud of the hoofs.
We surrounded the farm in absolute silence, dismounting some
thousand yards away, and fixing bayonets. I told the men I
wanted no shots--that would have brought down the
commando--but cold steel and silence. We crept up and swept
the farm--it was weird, but, alas! they were out on the loot.
The men were furious, but we live in hopes.'

The end was a trifle disappointing, but S. Cohn, too, lived in
hopes--of some monstrous and memorable butchery. Even his wife had got
used to the firing-line, now that neither shot nor shell could harm
her boy. 'For He shall give His angels charge over thee.' She had come
to think her secret daily repetition of the ninety-first Psalm
talismanic.

When Simon sent home the box which had held the chocolates presented
by the Queen,