went on again in a
desultory way, paying no heed to the bullets flying over and around him,
and for the time being forgetting all about his comrade, who kept on
firing whenever he had an opportunity.

"What a pity it seems!" he mused. "Birds flitting about, bees and
butterflies sipping the honey out of the flowers, which are very
beautiful; so is this gully, with the sparkling water and ferns and
things all a-growing and a-blowing, as they say. Why, I should like
nothing better than loafing round here enjoying myself by looking about
and doing no harm to anything. I wouldn't even catch the fish if I
wasn't so hungry; and yet, here I am with a magazine-rifle trying to
shoot a Boer dead.

"Humph! yes," he continued after a short pause; "but only so that he
sha'n't shoot me dead. This is being a soldier, this is. Why was I
such a fool as to be one? The uniform and the band and the idea of
being brave and all that sort of thing, I suppose. Rather different out
here. No band; no uniform but this dirt-coloured khaki; no bed to sleep
on; no cover but the tent; roasting by day, freezing by night: hardly a
chance to wash one's self, and nothing to eat; and no one to look at you
but the Boers, and when they come to see what the soldiers of the Queen
are like they send word they are there with bullets, bless 'em! Well, I
suppose it's all right. We must have soldiers, and I wanted to be one,
and now I am one there does seem to be something more than the show in
doing one's duty bravely, as they call it.

"Well," he muttered at last, "this is getting monotonous, and I'm
growing tired of it. If they do shoot us both, they'll have had to pay
for it. Why, they must have used a couple of hundred cartridges. Not
very good work for such crack shots as they are said to be. If they
spend a hundred cartridges to shoot one buck, it would come cheaper to
buy their meat.

"All fancy," he muttered directly after; "that fellow couldn't have been
going where I thought, and yet it seemed so likely. There's the clump
of trees, and the very stone a fellow would make for to rest his rifle
on when he took aim from his snug hiding-place. But there's no one
there. The sun shines right upon it, so that I could see in a moment if
a Boer was there. His face would be just beyond that shadow cast so
clearly by what must be a dead bough. Yes, all a fancy of mine."

"Bob!" cried Lennox.

"Hullo!"

"I shall want some of your cartridg