e taint from the trenches is less sickening, unmingled with
the poisonous fumes of the lyddite bursting-charges, and the acrid odour
of smokeless powder. It is Sunday, when Briton and Boer hold the Truce of
God, and the church-bells ring to call and not to warn the people, and
sweet Peace and blessed Silence brood over the shrapnel-scarred veld. The
aasvogels feast undisturbed on bloated carcasses of horses and cattle
lying on the debatable ground between the Line of Investment and the Line
of Defence, the barbel in the river leap at the flies, and partridge and
wild guinea-fowl drink in the shallows, and bathe in the dry hot sand
between the boulder-stones.

The Market Square is populous with a chatting, sauntering crowd of people,
who enjoy the luxury of using their limbs without being called on to
displays of acrobatic agility in dodging trundling shell. There are
Irregulars and B.S.A.P., Baraland Rifles and Town Guardsmen. There are the
Native Contingent from the stad, and a company of Zulus, and the Kaffirs
and the Cape Boys with their gaspipe rifles that do good service in
default of better, and bring down Oom Paul's Scripturally-flavoured
denunciations upon Englishmen, who arm black and coloured folk to do
battle for their own sable or brown or yellow rights. These have donned
odd garments and quaint bits of finery to mark the holiday, and every
white man has indulged in the luxury of a comprehensive wash, a shave with
hot water, and a change of clothing, if it is obtainable. Also, drooping
feminine vanity revives in hair-waves and emerges from underground burrows
of Troglodytic type, arrayed in fluttering muslins, and crowned with
coquettish hats, which walk about in company with ragged khaki and
clay-stained duck and out-at-elbows tweed, and are proud to be seen in its
brave company.

Husbands and wives, fathers and daughters, sons and mothers, lovers and
sweethearts, meet after the week whose separating days have seemed like
weeks, and visit the houses whose pierced walls and roofs, that let the
white-hot sunshine in through many jagged holes, may one day, so they
whisper, holding one another closely, shelter them again in peace. Home
has become a sweet word, even to those who thought little of home before.
And many who were sinful have found conviction of sin and the saving grace
of repentance, and many more who denied their God have learned to know
Him, in this village town of battered dwellings, whose stree