THE SOLDIER PREACHER.

(Written at Enslin Battlefield.)

He was standing at eventide facing the rough and rugged heights of Enslin.
The crimson-tinted clouds that emblazoned the sky cast a ruddy radiance
round his head and face, making him appear like one of those ancient
martyrs one is apt to see on stained-glass windows in old-world churches in
Rome or Venice. His feet were firmly planted close to the graves of the
British soldiers and sailors who had fallen when we beat the Boers and
drove them back upon Modder River.

In one hand he held a little, well-worn Bible; his other hand was raised
high above his close-cropped head, whilst his voice rang out on the sultry,
storm-laden air like the clang of steel on steel:

"Prepare ter meet yer God!"

No one who looked at the neat, strong figure arrayed in the plain khaki
uniform of a private soldier, at the clean-shaven, square-jawed face, at
the fearless grey-blue eyes, could doubt either his honesty or earnestness.
Courage was imprinted by Nature's never-erring hand on every lineament of
his Saxon features. So might one of Cromwell's stern-browed warriors have
stood on the eve of Marston Moor.

"Prepare ter meet yer God!"

To the right of him the long lines of the tents spread upwards towards the
kopje; to the left the veldt, with its wealth of grey-green grass, sown by
the bounteous hand of the Great Harvester; all around him, excepting where
the graves raised their red-brown furrows, rows of soldiers lounged,
listing to the old, old story of man's weakness and eternal shame, and
Christ's love and everlasting pity. On the soldier preacher's breast a long
row of decorations gleamed, telling of honourable service to Queen and
country. Before a man could wear those ribbons he must have faced death as
brave men face it on many a battlefield. He must have known the agonies of
thirst, the dull dead pain of sleepless nights and midnight marches, the
tireless watching at the sentry's post, and the onward rush of armed men up
heights almost unscalable. On Egypt's sun-scorched plains he must have
faced the mad onslaughts of the Dervish hosts, and rallied with the men who
held the lines at Abu Klea Wells, where gallant Burnaby was slain. The
hills of Afghanistan must have re-echoed to his tread, else why the green
and crimson ribbon that mingled with the rest? His eyes had flashed along
the advancing lines of charging impi, led by Zu