he
veldt and the sunlight kisses the soldier's steel. Then comes the pathos
dear to the liar's soul--the farewells of the dying, sobbed just seven
seconds before sunset into comrades' ears; the faltering voice, the
tear-dimmed eyes, the death rattle in the throat, the last hand clasps, the
last deep-drawn breath, in which--mother--Mary--and Heaven are always
mingled; and then the moonlight and the moaning of the midnight
wind!----The war correspondent leaps from the tent, springs into his saddle
with his note-book in his mouth and an indelible lead pencil in each hand,
and rides over kopje and veldt ten dreary miles to gaze upon the scene of
that awful battle, and finds--one dead mule, and a nigger driver, dead
drunk. Then, if he has had a religious education, he climbs out of the
saddle, sinks on his knees, and prays for the peace of the camp liar's
immortal soul. But if, as is often the case, he has had a secular
upbringing, he spits on the dead mule, kicks the nigger, slinks back to
camp by a roundabout route, and swears to everyone that he has been forty
miles in another direction in a railway truck.

Four or five days later, just at that hour in the morning when a man clings
most fondly to his blankets, another rumour breaks the early morning's
limpid silence, a rumour of a battle of great import raging eighteen miles
away, just within easy riding distance for a smart correspondent. But the
man of ink and hardships chuckles this time. He has been fooled so often by
the imp of camp rumours; so murmurs just loud enough to be heard in heaven,
"That infernal camp liar again," and rustles his blankets round his ears
and drops cosily back into dreamland; but when, later on, he learns that an
important battle has been fought, and he has missed it all because he did
not want to be fooled by the camp liar, then what he mutters is muttered
loud enough to be heard in a different place, and the folk there don't need
ear trumpets to catch what he says either.

CHARACTER SKETCHES IN CAMP.

THE NIGGER SERVANT.

It is raining outside my tent. It has rained for three days and nights, and
looks quite capable of raining for three days more; everything is simply
sodden. You try to look around you at the men's camps. At every step your
boots go up to the ankle, squelch, in the black mud. You slip as you walk,
and go down on your hands and knees in the slimy filth; that brings o