rs in the same old way. Tiny, the
terrier, looked very weary and travel-stained after much forced
marching, which she had loyally undergone to the last. Jacko had not
turned a hair.

Williams turned up with "Pussy" in a lather, having been hunting for
me all round Pretoria. We ate bully-beef and biscuit together in the
old style. I took my pair down to water for the last time, "for auld
lang syne," and noticed that the mare's spine was not the comfortable
seat it used to be.

Then the last "boot and saddle" went, and they were driven away with
the guns and waggons to the station, and thence to the remount depot,
to be drafted later into new batteries. Ninety-four horses were handed
over, out of a hundred and fourteen originally brought from England, a
most creditable record.

The camp looked very strange without the horses, and it was odder
still to have no watering or grooming to do. In the evening, the
change from barrack-room to veldt was most delightful. We made a fire
and cooked tea in the old way, and talked and smoked under the soft
night sky and crescent moon. Then what a comfortable bed afterwards!
Pure air to breathe, and plenty of room. I felt I had hardly realized
before how pleasant the veldt life had been.

The Battery had done a great deal of hard work since I left; forced
marches by night and day between Warmbad, Pynaar's River, Waterval,
Hebron, Crocodile River, and Eland's River; generally with Paget, once
under Colonel Plumer, and once under Hickman. They had shared in
capturing several Boer laagers, and quantities of cattle. When they
left the brigade, a commando under Erasmus was negotiating for a
surrender, which was made a day or two later, as we afterwards heard.
Altogether, they had done very good work, though not a round was
fired. I only wish I could have been with them.

One thing I deeply regret missing, and that was Paget's farewell
speech to us, when all agree that he spoke with real and deep feeling.
One of our gunners took it down in shorthand, and here it is:--

"Major McMicking, Officers, non-commissioned officers, and men of the
C.I.V. Battery,--

"Lord Roberts has decided to send you home, and I have come to say
good-bye and to express my regret at having to part with you. We have
been together now for some months, and have had rough times, but in
its many engagements the C.I.V. Battery has always done its work well.
Before my promotion I commanded a battalion, and I know wh