It seems like ingratitude to thus criticise their shooting, but it cannot go without comment. On Monday, the August Bank Holiday, we did not shift camp, and had the luxury of a late _reveille_ (6 a.m.), and opportunities for very necessary washes and shaves, and such domestic duties as repairing rents in our breeches and tunics, and a little laundry work. Some of your "gentlemen rovers abroad" are finding that sewing the tears in one's tunic is a far different and more difficult matter than sowing one's wild oats at home. Owing to having baked the back of one of my boots in drying it at a fire, after my fourth immersion in a bog, I have had rather a bad heel, but am easier in that vulnerable part now, having cut out the back of the boot. On Tuesday, B-P. very unwillingly evacuated Rustenburg, and we marched back in the direction of Pretoria. I don't think, in spite of my verbosity, I have made any particular or direct allusion to our friend, the mule, so here I will make slight amends. Alas, he lost the little reputation he possessed at Nicholson's Nek, but to give the mule his due he is a hard worker--he has to be--he is born in bondage and dies in bondage (there is no room out here for the R.S.P.C.A.), and the golden autumn of a hard-lived life is not for the likes of him. He does not appear to get much to eat, though he will eat anything, as I found to my cost one night when in charge of the stable guard. A friend had lent me two _Graphics_, which I left on my blanket for a few minutes while I went the rounds. On my return I found a mule contentedly eating one of them--I only just managed to save half of it. When in camp, the Cape Boys, in whose charge they are, usually tie some of them to the wheels of the waggons, ammunition and water carts, the remainder being left to wander tied together in threes and fours, reminding one for all the world of Bank Holiday festivallers arm-in-arm on the so-called joyous razzle dazzle.