open, passing, after all, the prisoner's Boer companion, whose
fighting was for ever at an end; and at last we reached the entrance to
the old fort, with our wounded prisoner nearly insensible. After the
horses had been led in, the prisoner had to be lifted down and placed in
the temporary hospital made in a sheltered portion of the passage. Here
the surgeon saw him at once, and extracted a rifle-bullet, which had
nearly passed through the shoulder.

The Colonel was soon made acquainted with all that had passed, the
Sergeant being his informant, and men were sent out to give a soldier's
funeral to the dead Boer, who, with the Captain, must have dashed out in
one of our skirmishes, after being wounded, and tried to escape by going
right round the kopje, but had fallen by the way.

"Here, Moray," said the Colonel to me the next time he passed, "you've
been heaping coals of fire upon your enemy's head, I hear?"

"Oh, I don't know, sir," I said uneasily.

"I've heard all about it, my lad; and a nice sort of a prisoner you've
brought me in. If he had been a Boer I'd have put him on one of the
captured horses and sent him to his laager, but I feel as if I must keep
this fellow. There, we shall see."

"A brute!" said Denham that same night. "He's actually had the
impudence to send a message to the Colonel complaining of his quarters
and saying that he claims to be treated as an officer and a gentleman."

"Pooh! The fellow only merits contempt," I said.

"There are fifteen Irishmen in the corps, and they're all raging about
him. They say he ought to be hung for a traitor. He doesn't deserve to
be shot."

"But there isn't an Irishman in the corps would put it to the proof," I
said.

"Humph! Well," said Denham, "I suppose not, for he is a prisoner after
all. Officer and a gentleman--eh? One who must have left his country
for his country's good."

CHAPTER THIRTY ONE.

DENHAM'S BAD LUCK.

The men of the corps were in high glee during the following days, the
Boers making two or three attempts to cut off our grazing horses and
oxen, but smarting terribly for being so venturesome. In each case they
were sent to the right-about, while our cattle were driven back into
safety without the loss of a man.

The enemy still surrounded us, occupying precisely the same lines; and,
thoroughly dissatisfied with a style of fighting which meant taking them
into the open to attack our stronghold, they laagered and str