I'm getting rather tired of my prolonged loaf in Arcadia, for that is the name of this part of Pretoria, and although it is really not my fault, still I feel ashamed of myself for not being with the company. Still, even if I were out of the hospital, I should merely be able to join a number of details of Sussex, Devon, Dorset, Fife, and other Yeomen who are waiting in Pretoria an indefinite time for remounts and fresh equipment. I daresay my last letter, if it arrived at all arrived later than usual, as the day the mails left here there was a biggish fight a few miles down the line at the first station (Irene), and the train had to return. It is also rumoured that the home mails due were held up and collared, a hardy perennial this. All last Friday we could hear big guns pounding away, and we heard on Saturday that the enemy had pulled up a good deal of the line, but the fort, or forts, at Irene had held their own. In addition to this, rumour hath it that Delarey and eight hundred (or 500, or 1,000) have been killed or captured, also that Clements has been killed. But all this, as usual, needs confirmation. So inaccurate or vague is actual news when we do get it, that a big fight might take place in the nearest back-garden, and we should be absolutely ignorant of the real details of the combat. I have just heard that the news that General Clements is dead is correct. He died of a wound received some days ago I am told. If it is true, we have lost another good officer and brave man. We certainly have made every use of our privilege as Englishmen to grumble since we have been out here. A certain Bill Fletcher, erstwhile a Cockney pot boy, now of Kitchener's Horse, has just taken a bed in our tent, and has announced that he is tired of the "blooming" country, where the "blooming" flowers don't smell, the "blooming" birds don't sing, and the "blooming" fruit don't taste (this latter charge is not quite correct), and he wants to get back to the "blooming" fog and smoke of London; all this, and he has only been at it five months. THE CAREER OF AN UNTRUTH. Clements is not dead, and Delarey and his friends are not captured. I am telling you the latest rumours and anti-rumours, as this letter progresses. And yet the man I had the first version from had had it from an R.A.M.C. Sergeant, who had it on the most reliable authority of the commandant's orderly, who had heard the commandant tell it to the P.M.O. He had also been corroborated by a man who had seen the man who took it down from the heliograph. Also one of the hospital runners had heard Dr. ---- tell Dr. ----, and a friend of his had a friend who knew a man on the officers' mess, who had seen it up in orders, distinctly.