the shops a visit. At the hotel I managed to get
a dinner of bread and dripping, washed down with a cup of coffee, guiltless
of both milk and sugar. But, if the bill of fare was meagre, the bill of
costs made up for it in its wealth of luxuriousness. If I rose from the
table almost as hollow as when I sat down, I only had to look at the
landlord's charges to fancy I had dined like one of the blood royal.
Opposite the hotel stands the church, a dainty piece of architecture, fit
for a more pretentious town than Senekal. It is fashioned out of white
stone, and stands in its own grounds, looking calm and peaceful amidst all
the bustle and blaze of war. Someone has turned all the seats out of the
sacred edifice, preparatory to converting it into a hospital. The seats are
not destroyed; they are not damaged; they are stacked away under a
neighbouring verandah.

I do not think it wrong so to utilise a church. It is the only place fit to
put the wounded men in in all the town. The great Nazarene in whose name
the church was erected would not have allowed the sick to wither by the
wayside in the days when the Judean hills rang to the echo of His magnetic
voice, nor do I think it wrongful to His memory to convert His shrine into
an abiding place for the sick and suffering.

Far away on our left flank the enemy hold the heights, and watch us moving
outward, whilst between them and us, stretching mile after mile in a line
with our column, ripples a line of scarlet flame, for the foe has fired the
veldt to starve the transit mules, horses, and oxen. Like a sword
unsheathed in the sunlight, the flames sparkle amidst the grass, which
grows knee-deep right to the kopje's very lips. Birds rise on the wing with
harsh, resonant cries, flutter awhile above their ravished homes, then
wheel in mid-air and seek more peaceful pastures. Hares spring up before
the crackling flames quite reach their forms, and, like grey streaks in a
sailor's beard on a stormy day, flash suddenly into view, and as suddenly
disappear again. Here and there a graceful springbok dashes through the
smoke, with head thrown back and graceful limbs extended, his glossy,
mottled hide looking doubly beautiful backed by that red streak of fire.
The wind catches the quivering crimson streak, and for awhile the flames
race, as I have seen wild horses, neck to neck, rush through the saltbush
plains at the sound of the stockman's whip. Then, as the wind drops, the
flames curl