pients to clamour greedily for more. Long before
this cruel war closed it became clear as noonday that Boer hostilities
could not be bought off by a crippling clemency, and that an
ever-discriminating severity is, in practice, mercy of the truest and
most effective type.

How great the pressure on the military authorities became in
consequence of these frequent breakages of the railway line, and how
serious the inconvenience to the mercantile community, as indeed to
the whole civil population, may be judged from the fact that only on
the day of my return from Resina Garcia did the Pretoria merchants
receive their first small consignments of food stuffs since the
arrival of the British troops some four months before. Clothing,
boots, indeed goods of any other type than food, they had still not
the faintest hope of getting up from the coast for many a week to
come. War is always hard alike on public stores and private cupboards;
but seldom have the supplies of any town, not actually undergoing a
siege, been more nearly exhausted than were those of Pretoria at the
time now referred to. For hungry and impecunious folk the City of
Roses was fast becoming a bed of thorns.

[Sidenote: _Farewell to the Guards' Brigade._]

From Pretoria I accompanied the Guards on what we all deemed our
homeward way as far as Norval's Pont. Then the Brigade, as such, was
broken up for blockhouse or other widely dispersing duties; and I was
accordingly recalled to headquarters for garrison work. At this point,
therefore, I must say farewell to the Guard's Brigade.

For over twelve months my association with them was almost absolutely
uninterrupted. At meals and on the march, in the comparative quiet of
camp life, and on the field of fatal conflict, I was with them night
and day; ever receiving from them courtesies and practical kindnesses
immeasurably beyond what so entire a stranger was entitled to expect.
Officers and men alike made me royally welcome, and won in almost all
respects my warmest admiration.

Their unfailing consideration for "The Cloth" by no means implied that
they were all God-fearing men; nor did many among them claim to be
such; but gentlemen were they one and all, whose worst fault was their
traditional tendency towards needlessly strong language. To Mr
Burgess, the chaplain of the 19th Hussars once said, "The officers of
our battalion are a very gentlemanly lot of fellows, and you never
hear any of them swear. The col