animated scene.  Orderlies run or gallop about; quartermasters and adjutants and others hurry here and there, with their hands full of papers from one marquee to another, collecting their orders; shopping as it were, but shopping on rather a large scale; and the big ox-waggons come creaking along and churning up the mud.  This is where the cost of a war comes in.  These are a few of the little things that our army will require on its way to Pretoria.  There will be money to pay for this.  We shall feel this some day, you and I.

And poor unstuffed Bloemfontein lies there empty.  There are all the shops, and here all the merchandise.  You may guess that the tradesmen are indignant.  Never has there been such a market.  Here is the whole British army clamouring for all kinds of things; most furiously perhaps for eatables and drinkables, baccy and boots.  All these things have long been bought up, and the poor Tommies can only wander, sullen and unsated, up and down the streets and stare hungrily in at the empty shop windows; while out of the empty shop windows the shopkeeper glares still more hungrily at them.  I have heard how in the Fraser River the fish positively pack and jostle as they move up.  So here; but the unhappy sportsman has nothing to catch them with.  Brass coal-scuttles and duplex lamps are about all that remains in the way of bait, and these are the only things they won’t rise to.  He rushes off to Kitchener.  “Give me a train a day.  Give me a train a week.”  “You be d——­d,” growls Kitchener.  Back he comes.  The hungry eyes are still staring.  Incarnate custom flows past.  Never in all his life will such a chance recur.  Poor wretch!  It is like some horrible nightmare.

LETTER XV

MODDER REVISITED

BLOEMFONTEIN, April 9, 1900.

All the way from Modder River down the Kimberley line and up the central one from Naauwpoort, the most dismal rumours reached me at all stations, growing more definite as I neared Bloemfontein.  Sanna’s Post and Reddersberg!  You have heard all about them by now.  Nearly 1000 casualties and seven guns taken.

You remember I told you in my last letter that a big body of Boers marched north across our bows.  Pilcher was out on that side and drew back.  The Boers got wind of him, and wheeled west in pursuit.  Broadwood, not strong enough to hold Thaba Nchu, moved in on Bloemfontein, the Boers after him.

It is no fun describing things one has not seen.  The ground I know.  It is a flat plain the whole way, but down the middle of it is a deep sluit or watercourse, some thirty feet deep, with steep, sudden banks, and through this the road dips down and passes.  Broadwood halted on the east side of it, thus leaving it between himself and home.  In doing this he gave a chance to an enemy who never throws a chance away.  The Boer leader was Christian De Wet.