England one walks upon a covey of partridges.  Then, lying down one day after dinner for a nap, B.-P. discovered on awaking that a snake had selected precisely the same spot for its own siesta.  The charm of night marches, too, was occasionally broken by the growling of a bloodthirsty hyaena, following and snarling at the heels of the horses.  These were dangers, however, that added the few touches necessary to complete the picture of our smart adjutant of Hussars in cowboy hat, grey flannel shirt, breeches and gaiters, with a face as brown as a Kaffir’s, wandering over the South African veldt.  During these expeditions, by the way, Baden-Powell’s wardrobe came to ignominious grief, and under the tattered breeches, the stained shirt, and the split boots, he was a mere network of holes.  The ankles of his socks remained true to the end, but the rest of them, in B.-P.’s euphemistic phrase, were most delicate lace.  The one drawback to the tub in the river, leaving out the chance of a stray crocodile, was the difficulty he experienced in getting back into these delicate open-work socks, and the only way of surmounting this difficulty was by bathing—­socks and all!

The marches, too, had their intervals of fighting, and the little patrol was frequently so in touch with the enemy that Tommy Atkins and Master Matabele could exchange compliments.  “Sleep well to-night,” the grinning savages would shout from the hills; “to-morrow we will have your livers fried for breakfast!” And the compliments became sterner whenever the Matabele recognised in the little force of whites the dread “Wolf that never Sleeps.”  “Wolf!  Wolf!” they shrieked with savage ferocity, and if Baden-Powell had the nerves of some of us he must have had many a bad night after hearing that yell, and marking the gleaming eyes and the frothing lips that twitched with lust for his destruction.

Then there was the bitterest work of all.  The closing of suffering eyes that had grown so strangely dear during the hardships of such work as this; the saying of farewells to the men who had raced by one’s side with Death at their heels for how many hard weeks.  Of one of these Baden-Powell writes in his diary:  “His death is to me like the snatching away of a pleasing book half read.”  And solemn as the funeral service ever is, one fancies how awe-inspiring, how poignant its impressiveness, when in the dark, “among the gleams of camp-fires and lanterns, with a storm of thunder and lightning gathering round,” a few fighting Englishmen heard its message over the body of a fellow-soldier.

Baden-Powell’s description of the day’s work at this time gives one a good idea of the life of a patrol.  This is what he wrote in his diary for his mother’s eyes:  “Our usual daily march goes thus:  Reveille and stand to arms at 4.30, when Orion’s belt is overhead. (The natives call this Ingolobu, the pig, the three big stars being three pigs, and the three little ones being the dogs running after them; this shows that