"Whisht! whisht! I'd like to whisht you with a Boer's sjambok," cried the Sergeant. "Here he finds you wounded and where you'd have lain and died, and the carrion-birds would have come to the carrion; and when the brave lad's helped you, given you water, bound up your wound, and put you on his own beast, like that man did in Scripture, you turn round in the nastiness of your nature and try to sting him. Bah! I'd be ashamed of myself. You're not Irish. I don't even call you a man." The Sergeant's flow of indignation sounded much poorer at the end than at the beginning; and, his words failing now, I had a chance to get in a few. "That's enough, Sergeant," I said. "You forget he's a wounded man and a prisoner." "Not half enough, Mr Moray," cried the Sergeant. "I'm not one of your sort, full of fine feelings; only a plain, straightforward soldier." "And a brave man," I said, "who cannot trample on a fallen enemy." Sergeant Briggs gave his slouch felt hat a thrust on one side, while he angrily tore at his grizzled shock of closely-cut hair: it was too fierce to be called a scratch. "All right," he said--"all right; but the sight of him trying to get out a pistol to hold at the head of him as--as--" "Be quiet, Sergeant," I said, smiling in spite of myself. "Look: the poor fellow's turning faint. Let's get him to the camp. Ride alongside him and hold him up or he'll fall." "If I do may I--" "Sergeant!" I shouted. "Oh, all right, all right. I--But here, I'm not going to let you begin to domineer over your officer." "Sergeant," I said gently, and without a word he pressed his horse close alongside the prisoner, thrust a strong arm beneath him, and we went out into the open, passing, after all, the prisoner's Boer companion, whose fighting was for ever at an end; and at last we reached the entrance to the old fort, with our wounded prisoner nearly insensible. After the horses had been led in, the prisoner had to be lifted down and placed in the temporary hospital made in a sheltered portion of the passage. Here the surgeon saw him at once, and extracted a rifle-bullet, which had nearly passed through the shoulder. The Colonel was soon made acquainted with all that had passed, the Sergeant being his informant, and men were sent out to give a soldier's funeral to the dead Boer, who, with the Captain, must have dashed out in one of our skirmishes, after being wounded, and tried to escape by going right round the kopje, but had fallen by the way. "Here, Moray," said the Colonel to me the next time he passed, "you've been heaping coals of fire upon your enemy's head, I hear?" "Oh, I don't know, sir," I said uneasily. "I've heard all about it, my lad; and a nice sort of a prisoner you've brought me in. If he had been a Boer I'd have put him on one of the captured horses and sent him to his laager, but I feel as if I must keep this fellow. There, we shall see."