kness Captain Paley's men did not
see him fall directly after he had given the order for them to charge.
He was left there sorely wounded, and one of the many foreigners now
fighting against us in the enemy's ranks levelled a rifle at him, but
was stopped before he could pull the trigger by a blow from the butt-end
of a rifle that sent him reeling. Again it was a grey-bearded veteran
who had come so timely to the rescue of an Englishman. If many such
stories are told we must either come to the conclusion that the older
Boers do not entertain against us the hatred with which they are
credited, or that there is one of their number who goes about the
battlefield from fight to fight seeking opportunities to succour British
soldiers in distress. At any rate, all this is simply history repeating
itself. Mr. Carter, in his impartial narrative of the former Boer war,
tells us:--

"Similar evidence was furnished after every encounter our troops had
with the Dutch. It was the young men--some mere boys of fifteen--who
displayed, with pardonable ignorance, bragging insolence. The men of
maturer years, with very few exceptions, behaved like men, and in the
hour of victory in many instances restrained the braggarts from
committing cowardly acts. In this fight at the Nek, Private Venables of
the 58th, who was one of the prisoners taken by the Boers, owed his life
to Commandant De Klerck, who intervened at a moment when several Boers
had their guns pointed at the wounded soldier."

It is not, however, very reassuring to find that but for such timely
intervention wounded men might possibly be shot or ill-treated, and
therefore our soldiers will not be restrained from risking their lives
to rescue a fallen comrade merely by the announcement that "we are at
war with a civilised foe, to whose care the wounded in battle may be
confidently left." We may be thankful for the fact that saving life
under fire is still regarded as an act worthy of the Victoria Cross "for
valour."

In other respects, we do not owe much gratitude to the Boers. If we were
dependent upon them for anything that could help to make life in a
bombarded town tolerable, Ladysmith's plight to-day would be pitiful.
They have tried their hardest--though not successfully--to make every
house in the place untenable between sunrise and sunset, doing
infinitely more damage to private property than to military defences;
and they have thrown shells about some parts of the long o