nt-major cautioned me not to indicate by my
actions what I saw as we rode to the top of a commanding hill. The enemy
had abandoned the stream because their retreat would have been exposed
to fire. They made a stand back in the hills. The advance felt the
stream quickly, and passed, fanning out to develop. The left flank
caught their fire, whereat the centre and right came around at top
speed. But this is getting so serious.

The scene was crowded with little pictures, all happening
quickly--little dots of horsemen gliding quickly along the yellow
landscape, leaving long trails of steely dust in their wake. A scout
comes trotting along, his face set in an expectant way, carbine
advanced. A man on a horse is a vigorous, forceful thing to look at. It
embodies the liveliness of nature in its most attractive form,
especially when a gun and sabre are attached.

[Illustration: 23 JUMPING ON A HORSE]

When both living equations are young, full of oats and bacon, imbued
with military ideas, and trained to the hour, it always seems to me that
the ghost of a tragedy stalks at their side. This is why the polo-player
does not qualify sentimentally. But what is one man beside two troops
which come shortly in two solid chunks, with horses snorting and sending
the dry landscape in a dusty pall for a quarter of a mile in the rear?
It is good--ah! it is worth any one's while; but stop and think, what if
we could magnify that? Tut, tut! as I said before, that only happens
once in a generation. Adobe doesn't dream; it simply does its morning's
work.

The rear-guard have popped at our advance, which exchanges with them.
Their fire grows slack, and from our vantage we can see them mount
quickly and flee.

After two hours of this we shake hands with the hostiles and trot home
to breakfast.

These active, hard-riding, straight-shooting, open-order men are doing
real work, and are not being stupefied by drill-ground routine, or
rendered listless by file-closer prompting or sleepy reiteration.

By the time the command dismounts in front of stables we turn longingly
to the thoughts of breakfast. Every one has completely forgiven the
Colonel, though I have no doubt he will be equally unpopular to-morrow
morning.

But what do I see--am I faint? No; it has happened again. It looks as
though I saw a soldier jump over a horse. I moved on him.

"Did I see you--" I began.

"Oh yes, sir--you see," returned a little soldier, who ran with the