ite stone in the History of the Siege of
Gueldersdorp, and the chapter is headed "The Turning of the Tables." It
gives a spirited description of the prudent retreat of General Huysmans,
the unconditional surrender of Commandant Eybel, and winds up with a
pen-and-ink sketch of Brounckers' bright boy breaking the chaff-bread of
captivity in the quarters of that slim duyvel, the Engelsch Commandant.

But while the Boer was yet top-dog in the scuffle, and held the Barala
stad, and the fort that had lately done duty as headquarters for the
Irregulars, holding captive their commanding officer, several of his
juniors, and some fifteen troopers, with a handful of Town Guards; and all
the fighting men who could be spared from the trenches were being posted
between the menacing danger and the town, and a couple of field-guns were
being hurried into position, and it had not yet occurred to Commandant
Schenk Eybel that the cautious Huysmans might leave him in the lurch,
things looked very bad indeed for the doughty defenders of little
Gueldersdorp--certainly up to afternoon-tea time, when a couple of Scotch
girls crossed the two hundred yards of veld that lay between the Fort and
the town, carrying cans of steaming tea for the parching Britons penned up
there.

You are to see those calm, unconscious heroines start, fixing their
hairpinned braids with quick, deft touches, pinning up their skirts as for
the crossing of a wimpling burn rather than for the fording of Death's
black river. They measured the distance with cool, keen eyes, took up a
can in each hand, exchanged a word, and started. The remaining can they
left behind, saying they would come back for it. And they meant to, and
would have, but for a pale young woman in curling-pins, crowned by the
deplorable wreck of a large and flowery hat, and wearing a pink cotton
gown of deplorable limpness, through the washed-out material of which her
sharpened collar-bones and thin shoulders threatened to pierce. For 'ow
are you to take to call a proper pride in yourself when you 'aven't got no
'art for anythink any more?

You are to understand that Emigration Jane 'ad bin 'in 'Orspital along of
what the doctors called the Triphoid Fever, months an' months; and 'ad bin
orful bad, an' sent back again after being discharged, on accounts of an
Elapse, and kep' a dreadful time at the Women's Combalescent, through her
blood being nothink but water--and now you may guess the reason of that
f