saddle. I had to ride with me little troop for dear life then, for the
rocks all around us were alive with rifles. That house still stands; but if
Driscoll's name is Driscoll it's going to burn, and the cur who flew the
white flag in it, if I can get him, for the sake of the dead boys out on
the veldt there. That's the only dirty trick I knew them play, and they
must have been a lot of wasters, not like the general run of their
fighters."

Three nights ago Driscoll, Davies, Brabant, and twenty men camped in a
farmhouse a long way from the British lines, for these men scour the
country for many miles in all directions. The night was cold and rough, a
bleak wind whistling amidst the kopjes half a mile away. Just as the scouts
were sitting down to supper, the farmer's wife rushed in, and said to
Driscoll, in a voice between a sob and a scream, "Do you know, sir, that
our burghers are in the kopjes, and are watching the farm?" and as she
spoke she wrung her hands wildly. The Irish scout rose from the table and
bowed, as only an Irish scout can bow, for the "vrow" was about thirty
years of age, and pleasing to the eye beyond the lot of most women. "I am
awfully glad to hear it, madam," he said in his execrable Dutch. "I've been
looking for that commando for a week past. As they have doubtless sent a
message by you, please send this back for me. Tell their officers, if they
will accept an offer to come and dine with Driscoll's Scouts here to-night,
they shall be made welcome to the best we have in the way of kindness. For
it must be cold waiting outside in the wind. Tell them they shall go as
they come, unmolested and unwatched, and in the morning we'll come out and
give 'em all the fight they want in this world." Then, sweeping the floor
with a graceful wave of his green puggareed soft slouch hat, Driscoll bowed
the astonished dame out of the dining-room, whilst his officers and men
nearly choked themselves with their hot soup, as they noticed him
surreptitiously drawing a pocket mirror from his breeches pocket. For well
they knew that the dare-devil leader was thinking far more of the effect
his looks had had on the Dutch housewife than of the effect of his message
on the enemy. Yet, at the first promise of dawn, he unrolled himself from
his blanket on the hard floor, and was the foremost man to show in the
open, where the enemy's rifles might reach him. But no rifles sounded, for
the Boers had declined the invitation both