olo-ground, sir."

_B._ "Oh, send out a troop to get touch with them. I'll bet it's only
a flock of ostriches or a mirage. Tell the troop not to get
compromised if they should find Boers in greater strength than
themselves. Hold another troop and the pom-pom in readiness to
support, if there should be anything. But it's not reasonable that
there should be 500 Boers so near us at this hour. It is too late for
our Houwater friends, and too early for ole man Christian.[30]"

_I. O._ "Very good, sir."...

Almost immediately upon the despatch of the troop, the main body of
the co-operating command marched up to the clay pools. The two
generals met to discuss the situation. The meeting of generals in the
field nearly always lends itself to the picturesque. We know that it
is a favourite theme for the artist's brush. And even in this
utilitarian age, when the genius of man has shorn war of much of the
panoply with which the calling of arms is associated in peace, there
is something attractive in the sight of the communion of great
soldiers in the field. The glory of war is not all cock-feathers and
steel scabbards. In fact, the brilliant colours which blend so well
with the pasture-green and brick-red of Europe would offend the eye if
grouped upon the russet veldt--would seem as incongruous as a flamingo
perching upon a hay-rick. It is an interesting picture. The two
generals standing together a little apart from their staffs, which
mingle in friendly intercourse. The lines of dismounted orderlies
holding the horses from which the officers have just dismounted. The
senior general is a tall spare man, just overlapping the prime of
life. It is more than the powdered dust that makes his moustaches
appear so fair. He is a man careful of his personal appearance. From
head to foot his uniform of modest brown fits him as would a glove--to
borrow from the sayings of a fair cousin across the Atlantic,--the fit
of everything is so perfect that it looks as if he had been melted and
poured molten into a khaki casing. The sombre dirt colour is relieved
by the scarlet and gold upon his peaked cap and collar, and the long
string of kaleidoscopic ribbons on his breast which tells of many
tented fields--and maybe as many "fields of cloth-of-gold," for it
does not take war alone now to decorate the breast, or to bind
spur-straps across the instep of a knight. The brigadier stands in
contrast to his senior. He is as tall a man, more commandin