That hour has come.  The men who sleep in soldiers’ graves beside the willow-clad banks of the Modder River have been avenged.  Or, if the debt has not been paid in full, the interest owing on that bond of blood has at least now been handed in.  It was not paid by our Colonial sons; not from Australian or Canadian hands did the stubborn Boers receive the debt we owed.  They were not Irish hearts that cleared old Scotland’s legacy of hate on that May Day amidst the African hills; it was not England’s yeoman sons who did that deed.  But men whose feet were native to the heather, men on whose tongues the Scottish burr clung lovingly—­the bare-legged kilted “boys” whom the lasses in the Highlands love, the gallant Gordons.

Let the tale be told in Edinburgh Town; let it ring along the Border; let the lass, as she braids the widow’s hair, whisper the story with love-kissed breath; let the lads, as they come from their daily toil, throw out their chests for the sake of their breeding; let the pessimist turn up the faded page of history, written when the world was young, and find, if he can, a grander deed done by the sons of men since the morning stars sang together.

So to my tale.  It was the 1st of May.  We had the Boers hard pressed in Thaba Nchu in a run of kopjes that reached in almost unbroken sequence farther than a man’s eye might reach.  The flying French was with us, chafing like a leashed greyhound because he could not sweep all before him with one impetuous rush.  Rundle, too, was here, with his haughty, handsome face, as keen as French, but with a better grip on his feelings.  Six thousand of the foe, under Louis Botha, cool, crafty, long-headed, resourceful, have held the kopjes.  Again and again we manoeuvred to trap them, but no wolf in winter is more wary than Botha, no weasels more watchful than the men he commanded.  When we advanced they fell back, when we fell back they advanced, until the merest tyro in the art of war could see that a frontal attack, unless made in almost hopeless positions, was impossible.  So Hamilton swept round their right flank, ten miles north of Thaba Nchu, and gave them a taste of his skill and daring, whilst Rundle held their main body here at Thaba Nchu.  Rundle made a feint on their centre in strong force, and they closed in from both flanks to resist him.  Then he drew off, as if fearing the issue.  This drew the Boers in, and they pounded our camp with shells until one wondered whether the German-made rubbish they used would last them much longer.  Then we threatened their left flank quickly and sharply, giving Hamilton time to strike on their right; and he struck without erring, whipping the enemy at every point he touched, driving them out of their positions, and holding them firmly himself, so threatening their rear and the immense herds of sheep and oxen they have with them, making a footing for the British to move on and cut Botha off from his base at Kroonstad.