ange sound began and the shells came
rattling around. 'I'm not afraid, only my hand shakes.'

It reminds us of a story told of a certain officer who was going into
action for the first time. His legs were shaking so that he could hardly
sit his horse. He looked down at them, and with melancholy but decided
voice said, 'Ah! you are shaking, are you? You would shake a great deal
more if you knew where I was going to take you to-day; so pull
yourselves together. Advance!'

We are not told whether the legs so addressed at once stopped shaking,
or whether they were taken still shaking into the battle. But this we do
know, that the highest type of courage is not incompatible with
nervousness, and that the courage that can conquer shaking nerves, and
take them all unwilling where they do not want to go, is the courage
that can conquer anything. The '_I_' that is not afraid even when the
'_hand_' shakes, is the real man after all, and the man of exquisite
nervous temperament may be an even greater hero than the man who does
not know fear.

Sir Herbert Chermside had succeeded General Gatacre, who was returning
home, and the column was now joining hands with General French, and
coming under the superior command of Sir Leslie Rundle. It was stern
work every day, and the chaplains, like the rest, were continually under
fire. Services could not be held, but night by night the chaplains went
the round of the picquets and spoke cheering words to them in their
loneliness, and, day by day, in the fight and out of it, they preached
Christ from man to man, ministering to the wounded, closing the eyes of
the dying and burying the dead, until at last they too reached
Bloemfontein and cheered the grand old British flag.

Chapter XI

BLOEMFONTEIN

'Look, father, the sky is English,' said a little girl as they drove
home to Bloemfontein in the glowing sunset.

'English, my dear,' said her father, 'what do you mean?'

'Why,' replied the little one, 'it is all red, white, and blue.'

And in truth, red, white, and blue was everywhere. The inhabitants of
Bloemfontein must have exhausted the stock of every shop. They must have
ransacked old stores, and patched together material never intended for
bunting. Wherever you looked, there were the English colours. No wonder
to the imagination of the little one even the sun was greeting the
victorious English, and painting the western sky red, white, and blue.

We cannot, of course, sup