f shell whizzed across the ground, passed close to Jack's head, and
tore a huge rent in a galvanised-iron shed behind him.

Then the umpire's whistle sounded again, and the game was proceeded
with, one and all treating the matter as a joke.

That evening when Jack got back to his tent he was tired out, but by the
dim light from a lantern he perused, with many a chuckle, the pages of
one of the two papers published in the camp. It was _The Lyre_, and
purported to contain nothing but untruths.

On the evening of January 5th, as Jack was reclining on his chair
looking round the camp with his field-glasses, he noticed that amongst
the men passing to Ladysmith from Intombi Spruit, or "Funkemburg", were
three whose movements were suspicious. They were dressed like colonial
volunteers, and carried rifles. Passing separately across the open
ground, they pushed forward without hesitation, and, once inside the
camp of Ladysmith, walked in the direction of Wagon Hill, where each in
turn disappeared into a hut which had been almost smashed to pieces by
one of the enemy's shells.

Jack watched them, curiously at first, wondering why they did not come
across from the neutral ground together, and what business they had to
be out of the camp; and then suspiciously, for their movements were
peculiar. They looked about them cautiously, and one by one dived into
the hut. Here they remained, and though he fixed his glasses in that
direction for half an hour there was no sign of them, and they did not
even appear when the bugle sounded the "Fall in!" all over the camp, and
the garrison turned out of their tents and formed up for the evening
inspection.

"That is queer!" he muttered suspiciously. "Who can they be? Not
civilians, I am sure, for they have no business over in this direction.
I don't like the look of things, and I'll keep my eyes upon those
beggars."

A few minutes later, as Sir George White and his staff rode on to the
nearest parade-ground and the guard there presented arms to their
commanding-officer, a man slipped out from the back of the hut, and,
having peered in all directions, struck the wall with his rifle. Jack
fixed his glasses upon him and waited. Almost immediately two men
emerged, and having looked about them suspiciously, fell in, and,
shouldering their weapons, marched off towards the heights of Caesar's
Camp, with the one who had first left the hut walking by their side.

"Well, that's rummy!" e