he same insatiable earth hunger as
ourselves, and hence unceasingly persisted in violating the
Conventions which forbade all further extension of Transvaal
territory. As a people they are more narrowly Protestant than even we
have ever been. The Doppers, of whom the President was chief, are
Ultra-Puritans; and they would suffer none but members of a Protestant
Church to have any vote or voice in their municipal or national
affairs. Jews and Roman Catholics as such were absolutely
disfranchised by them; and their singing, which later on we often
heard, by its droning heaviness would have delighted the hearts of
those Highland crofters who, at Aldershot, said they could not away
with the jingling songs of Sankey. "Gie us the Psalms of David," they
cried. The Dutch Reformed Church and the Presbyterian Church of
Scotland are nearer akin than cousins; and when after Magersfontein
our Presbyterian chaplain crossed over into the Boer lines to seek out
and bury the dead, he was heartily hailed as a _Reformed_ minister,
was treated with as much courtesy as though he had been one of their
own predikants, and as the result was so favourably impressed that an
imaginative mind might easily fancy him saying to Cronje, "Almost thou
persuadest me to become a Boer!"

Of all wars, civil wars are the most inexpressibly saddening; and this
terrible struggle was largely of that type. Neighbours who had known
each other intimately for years, members of the same church, and even
of the same family, found themselves ranged on opposite sides in this
awful fray. When Boer and Briton came to blows it was a _brother-bond_
that was broken, in sight of the awestruck natives. It was once again
even as in the days of old when Ephraim envied Judah and Judah vexed
Ephraim! Nevertheless, times without number, a concert in the midst of
strife, such as that described above, sufficed to draw together all
classes in friendliest possible intercourse, and seemed a tuneful
prophecy of the better days that are destined yet to dawn.

[Sidenote: _More good work on our right flank._]

We can only linger to take one more glance at this type of service by
this type of worker before we proceed with our story of the Guards'
advance. Winburg, like Heilbron, lay on our right flank, and was
occupied by the troops about the same time as we entered Kroonstad.
The Wesleyan clergyman was the only representative of the Churches
left in the place; and the story of his devoti