I fancy I stopped in my last near the end of a rather long-winded account of the shelling we experienced at the hands of Brother Boer, on Thursday evening last. To conclude that day's events, we finally shifted our horse lines a bit and turned in, spending a night undisturbed by the distant booming of the Boer guns or the ear-splitting cracking of our 4.7. The next day we returned to our old lines, and settled down for a good day's rest, as we heard that Clements was waiting for Ridley to come up. I had hardly unsaddled, however, when the sergeant-major came round and told half-a-dozen of us to saddle up and go out with the two guides (civilians, British farmers, who are with this column and know the locality). So we flung on our saddles, and slipping on our bandoliers, mounted and set out in our shirt sleeves (mark that!) with our guides in their civilian togs (mark that!). From these individuals we gathered we were off cattle-lifting, the Boers having left some in a kloof about a couple of miles south of the camp. With jocular allusions to our last quest of a similar nature (the laager near Rustenburg) we smoked and trotted along, comfortable in our shirt sleeves after so much of the usual marching order. Following, came four "boys" to drive the cattle home. We soon reached our objective. The "boys" were sent into the kloof, while we dismounted a little way up the stone-covered kopje on the right, and leaving a couple to look after the gees, the guides and the remainder of us started to climb the heights and cover the "boys" if necessary. Soon a rifle report was heard, and then another. The guides said it was a picket of ours firing on us in mistake from the kopje on the left, and suggested that one of us should work round and let them know who we were. Most of us argued that the report was a Mauser one. However, the guides prevailed, and I was deputed for the job, when the "boys" came running in breathless and told us pantingly that Boers had been sniping them. So seeing that it would be impossible under the circumstances to lift the cattle, we retired on our horses, mounted and moved off. And then the beggars, who had evidently moved up closer, gave it to us fairly warm, and we had to open out and break into a gallop in the direction of the camp. We were about clear of the Mausers and riding through some bush, when, suddenly above a stone wall not a hundred yards in front of us, helmets and heads appeared, also glistening rifle barrels, which pointed, oh no, not on the kopje behind, but on us. [This is where the civilian clothes and shirt sleeves came in.] An officer shouted "Don't fire! Don't fire!!! Down with those rifles." This order was obeyed reluctantly, then "Who are you?" "Friends! Yeomanry!" "What Yeomanry?" "Sussex." "All right." They proved to be a picket of the Northumberland Fusiliers. Then we crossed a drift, our horses nearly having to swim, and finally reached camp. This morning (Saturday,