lightning, which only served to make the darkness visible. It was not
long, therefore, before the whole brigade hopelessly lost its way, and
had to halt by the hour, while the persistent rain drenched almost every
man, standing grimly silent, to the skin.

'Precisely at earliest dawn the splendid Highland Brigade appears to
have stumbled into a horrible snare, and in such close formation as to
render them absolutely helpless against their foes. Instantly their
general fell, mortally wounded; for a moment the whole Brigade seemed in
a double sense to have lost its head, and, in spite of the fierce and
terribly effective fire of our artillery, there followed, not indeed an
actual defeat, but none the less a grave disaster, involving further
delay in the relief of Kimberley and the loss of over 700 brave men
killed and wounded.


=War's Terrible Harvest.=

'The incoming of the wounded to the hospital camp was the most pitiful
sight my life has thus far brought me; but I scarce know which to admire
most--the patient endurance of the sufferers or the skilled devotion of
the army doctors, whose outspoken hatred of war was still more
intensified by the gruesome tasks assigned them.

'That night I slept on the floor of a captured Boer ambulance van,
fitted up as a physic shop with shelves fitted with bottles mostly
labelled poison. It was for me, even thus sheltered, a bitterly cold
night, much more for the scores of wounded who lay all night upon the
field of battle. Early next morning I buried two, the first-fruits of a
large harvest, and later on learned that among the killed was the