"They're the wittiest and cleverest fellows in the corps." "And if I wanted a dozen chaps to back me up in some dangerous business, I'd sooner depend on them for standing to me to the last than any one I know." "Oh! it would be a pity," I said warmly. "I hope the Colonel will think better of it." Denham winked at me as we sat in shelter by the light of a newly-invented lamp, made of a bully-beef tin cut down shallow and with a couple of dints in the side; it was full of melted fat, across which a strip out of the leg of an old cotton stocking had been laid so that the two ends projected an inch beyond the two spout-like dints. "What does that mean?" I asked. "The chief," said Denham, "good old boy, kicks up a shindy, and swears he'll do this or that, and then he thinks better of it. I've got off my wigging." "How do you know?" I said. "Met the old boy after I had been having a regular hunt everywhere with half-a-dozen men, and he nodded to me in quite a friendly way. `Thank you, Denham,' he said. `Tell your men that they were very smart.'" "I'm glad of that," I said. "Same here, dear boy. It's his way, bless him! He likes a red rag to go at, the old John Bull that he is; but if another begins to flutter somewhere else, he forgets number one and goes in for number two." "Yes, I've noticed that," I said. "But it's a great pity that fellow got away. I believe he has been shamming a bit lately." "No doubt about it. The nuisance of it is, that the brute will go and put the Boers up to everything as to our strength, supplies, ammunition, and goodness knows what else. But, look here, I'm going on now to see how Sam Wren is." "Sam Wren?" I cried wonderingly. "What's the matter with him?" "Matter? Why, he was the sentry Moriarty knocked down." "Oh, poor fellow! I am sorry," I said, for the private in question was one of the smartest and best-tempered men in our troop. "So's everybody," replied Denham. "I say: it was contusion in his case, not collusion." "Where is he?" I said. "In hospital. Duncombe's a bit uneasy about him. I'm going on again to see him. Will you come?" "Of course," I said eagerly. "Come along, then. We'll take the lamp, or some sentry may be popping at us." "The wind will puff it out in that narrow passage." "Not as I shall carry it," replied my companion; and he led off, with his broad-brimmed felt held over the flickering wick, in and out among the fallen stones between the walls, nearly to the other side of the court. Here another covered-in patch had been turned into a fairly snug hospital by hanging up two wagon-tilts twenty feet apart, after clearing away the loose stones; and a certain number of fairly comfortable beds had been made of the captured corn-sacks.