avenues with detached houses on either hand, and reached our
destination. We turned a corner; on the other side of the road stood a
long, low, red brick building with a slated verandah and a row of iron
railings before it. The verandah was crowded with bearded men in _khaki_
uniforms or brown suits of flannel--smoking, reading, or talking. They
looked up as we arrived. The iron gate was opened, and passing in we
joined sixty British officers 'held by the enemy;' and the iron gate was
then shut again.

'Hullo! How are you? Where did they catch you? What's the latest news of
Buller's advance? Are we going to be exchanged?' and a dozen other
questions were asked. It was the sort of reception accorded to a new boy
at a private school, or, as it seemed to me, to a new arrival in hell.
But after we had satisfied our friends in as much as we could,
suggestions of baths, clothes, and luncheon were made which were very
welcome. So we settled down to what promised to be a long and weary
waiting.

The States Model Schools is a one-storied building of considerable size
and solid structure, which occupies a corner formed by two roads through
Pretoria. It consists of twelve large class-rooms, seven or eight of
which were used by the British officers as dormitories and one as a
dining-room; a large lecture-hall, which served as an improvised
fives-court; and a well-fitted gymnasium. It stood in a quadrangular
playground about one hundred and twenty yards square, in which were a
dozen tents for the police guards, a cookhouse, two tents for the
soldier servants, and a newly set-up bath-shed. I do not know how the
arrival of other prisoners may have modified these arrangements, but at
the time of my coming into the prison, there was room enough for
everyone.

The Transvaal Government provided a daily ration of bully beef and
groceries, and the prisoners were allowed to purchase from the local
storekeeper, a Mr. Boshof, practically everything they cared to order,
except alcoholic liquors. During the first week of my detention we
requested that this last prohibition might be withdrawn, and after
profound reflection and much doubtings, the President consented to
countenance the buying of bottled beer. Until this concession was
obtained our liquid refreshment would have satisfied the most immoderate
advocate of temperance, and the only relief was found when the Secretary
of State for War, a kind-hearted Portuguese, would smuggle in a bott