effects of the night alarm were dying out, for there was plenty to
take the attention of the defenders of Groenfontein every day--days full
of expectancy--for a Boer attack might take place at any moment, while
every now and then some one at an outpost had a narrow escape; and two
men were hit by long-range bullets, fired perhaps a mile away by some
prowling Boer who elevated his piece and fired on chance at the
buildings in the village.

"Sniping," the men termed it, and all efforts to suppress this cowardly
way of carrying on the war were vain, for in most cases there was no
chance of making out from what scrap of cover the shots had been
despatched; while it became evident that, from sheer malignity, the
undisciplined members of the enemy's force would crawl in the darkness
to some clump of rocks, or into some ditch-like donga, or behind one of
the many ant-hills, and lie there invisible, firing as he saw a chance,
and only leaving it when the darkness came on again.

The rations issued grew poorer; but the men only laughed and chaffed,
ridiculing one another and finding nicknames for them.

Colour-Sergeant James, the sturdy non-commissioned officer, the back of
whose head still showed the blasting effects of the explosion which he
had shared with Lennox, was known as the "Fat Boy," on account of the
general shrinking that had gone on in his person till he seemed to be
all bone and sinew, covered with a very brown skin; another man came to
be known as the "Greyhound;" while Captain Roby's favourite corporal, an
unpleasant-looking fellow, much disliked by Lennox and Dickenson for his
smooth, servile ways, had grown so hollow-cheeked that he was always
spoken of as the "Lantern," after being so dubbed by the joker of his
company.

In fact, the men generally had been brought down to attenuation by the
scarcity of their food; while their khaki uniforms were not uniform in
the least, the men for the most part looking, as Bob Dickenson put it,
"like scarecrows in their Sunday clothes."

"The lads are getting terribly thin, sergeant," said Lennox one day,
after the men had been dismissed from parade.

"Oh, I don't know, sir," said the sergeant; "a bit fine, sir, but in
magnificent condition. Look at the colour of them--regular good warm
tan."

"But the Boers haven't tanned them, all the same, sergeant," put in
Dickenson, who was listening.

"No, sir, and never will," said the sergeant proudly. "As to their
being