Wednesday, October 24th. As predicted, we got our thunderstorm all right yesterday evening. For about half-an-hour the lightning never seemed to cease flickering about and jagging through the clouds, but the rain was not so bad. This morning the Fifes are sending into Rietfontein for mails. I hope we shall get some. I am handing this in for the post. As we only came here for twenty-four hours, we are not well off for literature or writing paper, though I brought some of the latter in my haversack: hence these lines. We shall soon have been here a week. The last time we went out for three days we remained out six weeks. I am a wonderful scavenger now. You should see me pitch like a hawk upon a dirty and torn ancient paper or book. As a result of a morning's work in that line, I am luxuriously reclining on my overcoat and reading a _Spectator_, after which I shall regale myself on the lighter and less solid contents of _Tit-Bits;_ later, I shall go round and swap them for other papers or magazines. A lot of us are dreadfully afraid of doing strange things when we get back to civilised life, such as asking for the "---- ---- salt" at dinner, diving our hands or knives into the dishes _immediately_ on their appearance and securing the best pieces after the manner of the Israelite priests with the hooks in the flesh-pots, commandeering fruit, fowls, eggs, or vegetables from our neighbours' gardens, wiping our knives and hands on our breeches or putties after a course, or a hundred other habits which have become so natural to us now. My greatest fear is that in a moment of absent-mindedness I shall, if tired, throw myself down on some cab rank where the horses are standing still and with my head pillowed on my arm and a foot twisted in a rein take a forty winks, so accustomed have I become to the close proximity of 'osses, waking and sleeping.