chope. Vengeance spoke in the sombre fire that blazed in every
Scotsman's eye. Retribution was carved large and deep on every hard-set
Scottish face; it spoke in silent eloquence in the grip of each hard,
browned hand on rifle barrels; it found a mute echo in each knitted brow,
and leapt to life in every deep-drawn breath; it sparkled in each tear that
rolled unheeded and unchecked down war-scarred cheeks, and thundered in the
echo of the men's tread across the veldt, right up to Cronje's lines, as
they marched campwards. The Highland Brigade had gazed upon its dead; and
neither time, nor change, nor thought of home, or wife, or lisping babe,
would wipe the memory of that sight away until the bayonet's ruthless
thrust gave Scotland quittance in the rich, red blood of those who did that
deed.

That hour has come. The men who sleep in soldiers' graves beside the
willow-clad banks of the Modder River have been avenged. Or, if the debt
has not been paid in full, the interest owing on that bond of blood has at
least now been handed in. It was not paid by our Colonial sons; not from
Australian or Canadian hands did the stubborn Boers receive the debt we
owed. They were not Irish hearts that cleared old Scotland's legacy of hate
on that May Day amidst the African hills; it was not England's yeoman sons
who did that deed. But men whose feet were native to the heather, men on
whose tongues the Scottish burr clung lovingly--the bare-legged kilted
"boys" whom the lasses in the Highlands love, the gallant Gordons.

Let the tale be told in Edinburgh Town; let it ring along the Border; let
the lass, as she braids the widow's hair, whisper the story with
love-kissed breath; let the lads, as they come from their daily toil, throw
out their chests for the sake of their breeding; let the pessimist turn up
the faded page of history, written when the world was young, and find, if
he can, a grander deed done by the sons of men since the morning stars sang
together.

So to my tale. It was the 1st of May. We had the Boers hard pressed in
Thaba Nchu in a run of kopjes that reached in almost unbroken sequence
farther than a man's eye might reach. The flying French was with us,
chafing like a leashed greyhound because he could not sweep all before him
with one impetuous rush. Rundle, too, was here, with his haughty, handsome
face, as keen as French, but with a better grip on his feelings. Six
thousand of the foe, under Louis Botha, cool, crafty