are due; and few
have done more than the commander of the Eighth Division, Sir Leslie
Rundle, who can say that not only did he never lose an English gun, but
that never did the enemy of his country succeed in breaking through his
lines. Few men, placed as he was, week after week, month after month, would
have been able to make so proud a boast.

These are possibly the last lines I shall ever write in connection with the
Eighth Division. Their work is practically over here. My own is done, for
my health is badly broken, and I shall follow this to England. But if I
cannot march home with them, when they come back in triumph to receive from
a grateful country the praise they have won, I can at least have the
satisfaction of knowing that for many months I shared their vicissitudes,
if not their glory.

CHARACTER SKETCHES IN CAMP.

THE CAMP LIAR.

In the days of my almost forgotten boyhood I remember reading in the Book
of all books that the Wise Man, in a fit of blank despair, declared that
there were several things under heaven which he could neither gauge nor
understand, viz., "The way of a serpent upon a rock, and the way of a man
with a maid," and I beg leave to doubt if Solomon, in all his wisdom, could
understand the little ways of a camp liar in his frisky glory. Whence he
cometh, whither he goeth, and why he was born, are conundrums which might
tax the ingenuity of all the prophets, from Daniel downwards, to solve. I
have sought him with peace offerings in each hand, hoping to beguile him
from his sinful ways, and have located him not. I have risen in the chilly
dawn, and laid wait for him with a gun, but have not feasted mine eyes upon
him. I have lain awake through the still watches of the night planning
divers surprises for him, but success has not come nigh unto me. I have
cursed the camp liar with a fervour born of long suffering, and I have
hired a Zulu mule-driver to curse him for me; but my efforts have come to
nought, and now I am sore in my very bones when I think of him. All men
whose fate it is to dwell under canvas know of his work, but no man hath
yet laid hand or eye upon him. A man goeth to his blankets at night time
feeling good towards all mankind, satisfied in his own soul that he has
garnered in all the legitimate news that he is in any way entitled to
handle for the public benefit; and lo! when he ariseth in the dawning he
finds tha