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N Monday, June 11, I went out from Pretoria to see a battle, much as one would go out to see a football game or a bull-fight that was scheduled to take place at a certain hour. All the correspondents had been notified, and carts and riding-horses were at the hotels. It was dark when we had started, and the quiet little town was deserted. Again came the confusing sense of unreality-a bewildering feeling of not understanding the situation. Why should they wish to fight any more? Why couldn't they stop now, and have it all over?

But Botha had determined to take another whack, and it was rumored that it might be his last, and, with his honor satisfied, he would cry quits.

Generals French and Hutton, with fourteen hundred men-all they could muster mounted out of an original four thousand-were in the hills to the north. Hamilton's division was circling from the southward, and the Eleventh Division, under Pole-Carew, occupied the valley to the eastward of the town. Lord Roberts's headquarters are in the British Residency in Pretoria's pretty little suburb of Sunnyside; and he and his staff also rode out, leaving instructions that they would be back in time for dinner.

From the south, across the Vaal, rumors had been coming of De Wet's activity. The line was cut; there was no telegraphic communication; we had no reliable information of how things were in the Free State. Botha had taken his third, or fourth, or twentieth "last stand" in the hills, and there was to be a fight. Pretoria was cut off from the base, but no one worried. Mackern, of "Scribner's," and I started together at daylight.

distant slopes, and hard to tell if friend or foe-the road was lonely and deserted. It was at Castleton that I first came up with the rear-guard and the transport; they were laagered near a drift flanked by great gum-trees and mimosas; a little des ted inn stood on the banks, with a weed-grown garden about it. The division, we were told, was moving on, not far in front; so on we went.

It did not take long to catch up with the marching men; there they were, plodding in and out among the slopes of the valley; all about were the encircling ridges of the Swartz kopjes meeting in low-lying hills some ten miles eastward. We were perhaps twelve miles from Pretoria. Suddenly heavy firing came from the north, then heavy firing from the southeast. The Eleventh halted, and the men sat down. "She bumps," said some one. "What ho!" The guns to the north were the nearer, and they appeared to be all of eight miles. For a few minutes they were at it hot and heavy; the wind blew the sound directly to us. The Vickers-Maxim "door-knocker " was at work, and there were at least one or two big guns, besides some field artillery, but which belonged to the English and which to the Boers it was hard to tell. The fight on the south was on with a vengeance by nine o'clock. First we thought of riding over to the kopjes and seeing what was going on. We decided not to, however, which was wise, or lucky, as you may care to look at it; the ridges just then were in Brother Boer's possession, a fact we were not sure of, but soon learned.

hill or undulation, for the ground was not level. It was a small imitation of the country rising beyond the black-shouldered kopjes.

There was a volunteer company of the

Argyle and Sutherland Highlanders sitting upon a hill among some rocks. It was really an escort to the naval gun which was in position on the north side of the hill. This company of "kilties" had had a peculiar history. It was lost! And it had been so since before Kroonstad. It had left the Highland Brigade, and had come across country escorting transport. Owing to the subsequent movements of the various divisions, and incidentally owing to the movements of General De Wet, they had not been able to rejoin their own command, which had been cut off from communication with the main body. So. they had been assigned to go in with the sailors as escort to the four-point-seven.

I was sitting chatting with a friend near a group of officers, looking out over the peaceful scene, for it was a fine warm day and the valley was flooded with sunlight and shivering heat-rays. We were talking of something far removed from war, when all at once we heard the sound of Mausers; hardly a mile away, the reports were coming from the direction of a patch of dark trees that evidently lined a stream. "Hello!" said my friend; "there they go."

It was his only comment.

The firing continued, and one or two of the men sat up and looked in the direction, but, perceiving they could see nothing, they settled back in comfortable positions in the grass that grew thick among the rocks.

Half an hour or so before, I had noticed some mounted infantry bearing away to the left, and I judged it had been they who had drawn the fire. I said so to the officer.

"May be," replied he; "but the Welsh are down somewhere in there."

As it looked as if there might be a lively little fight forthcoming, I mounted and rode forward, first through a ragged mealie-field, then through a gap in a wire fence, and came to another small kopje much like the one I had just left. The grass here, in a sheltered little hollow, grew up to my pony's ears. Evidently this place had once been a populous kraal of some black tribe, for all about were the remains of stone-walled houses, and lines of ditches crossed them. It made riding somewhat dangerous.

I was picking my way through care

fully, when I heard a voice. "Oh, why did I leave my little back room in Bloomsburee!" it sang.

There, not twenty feet distant, stood an artilleryman. I knew him by the red-andblue square on the side of his helmet.

"This is a funny sort of place," he said. "Looks like ruins, them."

I told him what I thought they were. "Have you got any guns out here?" I asked.

"Two, right over there," he returned, pointing with his thumb.

I looked, and, sure enough, there were the two big siege-guns, standing in the rocks, and wonderfully well hidden. had almost ridden into them. Their muzzles, lifting high, were pointing at a deep passage through the kopjes some six miles distant, but the men sat about as if they were out for a holiday. In the meantime, mind you, the battle on the north could be heard distinctly, while the fight that Hamilton was having appeared to be coming nearer. Added to this, there was the continual rattle and snapping and drubbing of the rifle-fire, seemingly just over the hill.

Reaching the crest and going over it to the other side, we could see the mounted infantry galloping from left to right strung out in skirmishing order. What appeared to be a line of low stone fences turned out to be three or four companies of infantry, the Welsh taking their ease on the slope of the hill.

Higher up on the crest were others, behind boulders. One could only see that they were firing from their motions. Two artillerymen came out in front of the guns and stretched a long wire between them. Then they squinted at the distant kopjes through little things like toy sextants. They called off some figures, and then one said, "Nine thousand eight hundred." Then they went back again.

They paid little or no attention to the skirmish going on in front. Skirmishing wasn't their business. It was their job to fire by mathematics, and try to hit things they could not see.

It did not take much trouble to find out where the Boers were who were doing all the firing in front.

They occupied a little patch of artificial wood and an empty stone farm-house that

stood near it. I thought how easy it would have been to send a shell or two over there and dislodge them, so that the little brown line could go forward if it wanted to. But the big guns disdained to enter into a contest with mere snipers. They remained silent.

It was all part of the plan, as I afterwards learned. The naval guns, the Highlanders, in fact the whole Eleventh Division, was lying there in hiding. It was an ambush on a big scale, and the plan was for French and Hutton to round up the Boers from either side and drive them down into the cup of the valley.

Suddenly the firing in front ceased. Through the glasses five or six men on horseback could be seen chasing away from the back of the little stone house. Two more joined them from the wood. Seven Mausers could cause quite a little row, I discovered. Of course there had been Lee-Metfords replying to them, and after a few minutes a few mounted infantrymen rode forward, visited the white house, skirted the clump of trees, and came back again. It was one of the little side-shows of a campaign—the sort of a little fight that is reported in a few words: "Exchanged a few shots."

But when the mounted infantry came back, there were two empty saddles. Somehow I could not help the feeling that, if I were going to be hit at all, I would rather be hit in a real battle than in a little affair like this. But the mounted men, I suppose, have become used to it. At any rate, as they returned, they were not even talking it over. It was part of their business to skirmish round and get shot at, and I suppose they had never reasoned about the irony of the order they had so often received: "Go forward, you men, and draw fire." By long practice I suppose they have learned to make cautious targets of themselves, and, whether it is heroic or brave or anything else, I suppose they don't think about it. It is part of their business, as I said before.

But the sun was setting, and it was evident that the plan of getting the Boers into the valley had failed-in fact, it was rather a surprising idea that they would ever have gone there at all.

We learned afterward that French and Hutton had found them in stronger force than had been supposed. The former

had extricated himself from a dangerous position only with great difficulty-had fought at least twice his number all day, up among the kopjes. Part of his transport had been captured, and his men had come under the fire of two forty-pounders at a range of four thousand yards.

As the evening fell the shells from Hamilton's guns could be seen bursting along the ridge, showing that there the enemy had fallen back. The Eleventh Division, except for the little skirmish before recorded, had not fired a shot.

We all returned to town. At the hotel dinner-tables it was voted that the show had not been worth the price of admission.

But the next morning we heard more of what had been going on, and we learned of the gallant charge of the Twelfth Lancers that had saved the two guns on the left of Hamilton's advance.

I had ridden out to headquarters next morning to get the details of the whole action, and I called upon one of the members of the staff in the comfortable little cottage which he, with several other officers, occupied at Sunnyside.

"What happened out with Hamilton yesterday?" I asked. "Was it much of a fight?"

The officer replied in a low tone that none of the others could hear. "Come out on the stoep," said he, "and I'll tell you."

He left the group, and we stepped out into the vine-clad porch. He appeared a little embarrassed.

"I didn't want to talk it over in there," he said. "So-and-so's brother was killed, and So-and-so's cousin. It was really quite a fight, you know." And then he told me of the Lancers' charge, and how Lord Airlie and the others had been shot while leading the regiment. He finished. his remarks with a smile of grim satisfaction.

"They got into 'em with the lance, and bagged a lot," he said.

He did not know the details of the fight, but assured me that there would be another this day, and probably it had begun already.

their wives and mothers but the week before, "Pretoria at last!"

And the laird of the bonnie house of Airlie, lately recovered from a wound at Thabanchu and just now rid of enteric fever I knew him well. A natural-born soldier, who loved his profession and commanded one of the best regiments in all England, with a record behind it part of his own making.

I shall never forget the first time I met him, and although it is a digression, I will relate it here.

It was on the way up from Orange River to Modder, back in November of last year. We were going by train, and it took us fifteen hours to make the fifty miles. It was just after the battle; the wounded were coming down the line, and the Boers were reported yet in the hills on either side of the railway. Every one wore his arms ready to repel attack. I had just joined with the army, and was an utter stranger. Not anticipating so long a journey, I had sent my outfit on by road. Night came down, and with it a chilling wind sprang up. Men and officers occupied open trucks. I was endeavoring to keep warm by flapping my arms about in cabman fashion, when some one spoke to me and asked if I had a blanket. explained that I had none.

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"Then crawl in here with me plenty of room." And the first thing I knew I was lying down beside a big, soldierly fellow with a short, stubby mustache and hair cropped, Tommy fashion, close to his head. "I sleep like a log," he laughed. "Do you snore?"

I replied that I didn't know, but I believed not, and I think a moment later we were both asleep. The next morning he The next morning he shared his breakfast with me-soldier's fare "bully beef" and biscuit. It was some time before I found out that it was Lord Airlie. I don't know why it is, but the finer an Englishman is as a soldier and gentleman, the simpler he seems to be.

I felt sad now as I walked away, for I remembered seeing once, on my way from Cape Town, a sweet-faced woman, prematurely gray, and some one told me it was Lady Airlie, then on her way to Bloemfontein to nurse her husband ill in the fever hospital.

the evening saw the English lines in possession of the Swartz kops, and they had gained possession by steady advances. Not in the old shoulder-to-shoulder fashion, but in long, spread-out, onward-creeping, not-to-be-stopped manner, availing of every rock and gully, preceded by the sweeping, searching shells. The casualties had been few. Yet it was the heaviest firing, so far as rifles were concerned, since Magersfontein, and there had been marvelous escapes. I saw a man who had two through his jacket, one through his water-bottle, and two through his haversack.

The next morning, looking back over the peaceful valley, the homes of distant Pretoria could be seen nestling among the hills like a New England town. A sudden puff of white smoke lifted high in the still air; it was eighteen miles away on the slope that ran up to Klapperkop.

"They are exploding ammunition found in the forts," said some one.

And thus we were brought back to the idea of war and to things near at hand.

All about were the little loopholed stone "sconces" built by the Boers the day before. There were the piles of empty cartridge-cases and the Mauser clips. Down at the foot of the hill there was a little group. The chaplain was there, and there was a longish gray bundle ready to be slipped into the narrow excavation in the stony ground back of the field hospital. The other side of the Swartz kops looked down upon the railway running east and west. Botha and his followers had gone by train.

"I wish that these bally old Boers would chuck the game," said a young officer, who was juggling for his own amusement with two bits of stone. "If they were half as sick of it as I am, they'd go home."

"It doesn't seem like war any more," put in another.

"No," observed a third. "It's just kill, kill, or be killed." Then he changed. the subject, as if it did not much matter. "I say! heard a good story on old Kempi' yesterday," and he detailed a yarn about some member of the mess.

I looked back at the town and the valley and the group at the foot of the hill. They were banking up the mound over the