nal "pass" in order to be present, and the
evening was full of threatenings, threatenings that in due time
justified themselves by a terrific thunderstorm, which resulted in
nearly every tunic being drenched before it could reach its sheltering
tent. Yet in spite of such forbiddings the men came in from the
outlying camps, literally by hundreds, to attend that Easter evening
service; and I deemed their presence there a notable tribute to the
spiritual efficiency of spiritual work among our troops the wide world
over.

_Easter Monday_, as in England so in Bloemfontein, is a Bank holiday,
and usually devoted to picnicking in The Glen, till the war put its
foot thereon, as well as on much else that was pleasurable. My most
urgent duty that day was the conducting of another military funeral;
and thereupon in the cemetery I saw a triple sight significant of
much.

At the gate were some soldiers in charge of a mule waggon on which lay
the body of a negro, awaiting burial. In the service of our common
Queen that representative of the black-skinned race had just laid down
his life. Inside the gates two graves were being dug; one by a group
of Englishmen for an English comrade, and one by a group of Canadians
for a comrade lent to us for kindred service by "Our Lady of the
Snows." So now are lying side by side in South African soil these two
typical representatives of the principal sections of the Anglo-Saxon
race; their lives freely given, like that of their black brother, in
the service and defence of one common heritage--that Christian empire
which surely God himself has builded. Camp and cemetery alike teach
one common lesson, and by the lips of the living and the dead enforce
attention to the same vast victorious fact! Next day it was an
Australian officer I saw laid in that same treasure-house of dead
heroes. He that hath eyes to see let him see! This deplorable war,
which thus brought together from afar the builders and binders of the
empire, in an altogether amazing measure made them thereby of one
mind and heart. It is life arising out of death; and surely every
devout-minded Englishman will learn at last to say "This is the Lord's
doing; and it is marvellous in our eyes!"

[Sidenote: _The Epidemic and the Hospitals._]

The first military funeral since the reoccupation of Bloemfontein by
the British it fell to my lot to conduct two days after our arrival. A
fine young guardsman who had taken part in each of our fou