gnized as my unhappy camera. Here, I suppose, my mind
must have slightly wandered, for I found myself repeating some Latin
lines, once my favorite imposition, but forgotten since my
school-days--

"Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes----"

when suddenly the voice of the field cornet broke into my musing with
"Your breeches, too, captain."

* * * * *

Trekking all that day on foot, sockless, and in the boots of another,
I had much to think of besides my throbbing head. The sight of the
long Boer convoy with guns, which had succeeded so easily in crossing
the drift _I_ was to have held, was a continual reminder of my
failure, and of my responsibility for the dreadful losses to my poor
detachment. I gradually gathered from the Boers what I had already
partially guessed, namely, that they had been fetched and guided all
round our camp by friend Brink, had surrounded it in the dark,
crawling about in the bush on the river bank, and had carefully marked
down our two poor sentries. These they had at once shot on the alarm
being given, and had then rushed the camp from the dense cover on
three sides. Towards evening my head got worse, and its rhythmic
throbbing seemed gradually to take a meaning, and hammered out the
following lessons, the result of much pondering on my failure:

1. Do not put off taking your measures of defence till the morrow, as
this is more important than the comfort of your men or the shipshape
arrangement of your camp. Choose the position of your camp mainly with
reference to your defence.

2. Do not in war-time show stray men of the enemy's breed all over
your camp, be they never so kind and full of butter, and do not be
hypnotized, by numerous "passes," at once to confide in them.

3. Do not let your sentries advertise their position to the whole
world, including the enemy, by standing in the full glare of a fire,
and making much noise every half hour.

4. Do not, if avoidable, be in tents when bullets are ripping through
them: at such times a hole in the ground is worth many tents.

After these lessons had been dinned into my soul millions and millions
of times, so that I could never forget them, a strange thing came to
pass--there was a kaleidoscopic change. I had another dream.

SECOND DREAM.

"And what did ye look they should compass? Warcraft learnt in a breath,
Knowledge unto occasion at the first far view of Death?"--KIPLING.

I sudden