daybreak, the old boy looks so jolly!”--and even as he spoke, a hale, grey-headed man, with a rosy countenance and a merry, dark eye, was seen returning the sentry’s salute as he advanced to the tent which had sheltered these young officers, and passing on with a good-humoured nod to Charlie, entered upon an eager whispered conversation with the gentleman inside, whose drowsiness seemed to have entirely forsaken him. “Old Swipes,” as he was irreverently called (a nickname of which, as of most military sobriquets, the origin had long been forgotten), was the senior captain of the regiment, one of those gallant fellows who fight their way up without purchase, serving in every climate under heaven, and invariably becoming grey of head long ere they lose the greenness and freshness of heart which in the Service alone outlive the cares and disappointments that wait on middle age. Now, Charlie had been sent to “Old Swipes” with dispatches from head-quarters. One of the general’s _aides-de-camp_ was wounded, another sick, an _extra_ already ordered on a _particular service_; and Charlie, with the dash and gallantry which had distinguished him from boyhood, volunteered to carry the important missives nearly a hundred miles through a country not a yard of which he knew, and threading whole hordes of the enemy with no arms but his sabre and pistols, no guide but a little unintelligible Hottentot. From the Kat River frontier to the defenceless portals of Fort Beaufort, the whole district was covered with swarms of predatory savages; and but that Fortune proverbially favours the brave, our young lancer might have found himself in a very unpleasant predicament. Fifty miles finished the lad’s charger, and he had accomplished the remainder of his journey walking and riding turn-about with his guide on the hardy little animal of the latter. No wonder our dismounted dragoon was weary--no wonder the rations of tough beef and muddy water which they gave him when he arrived elicited the compliment we have already mentioned to the good cheer of “The Fighting Light-Bobs,” as the regiment to which “Old Swipes” and his detachment belonged was affectionately nicknamed in the division. The great thing, however, was accomplished--wet, weary, and exhausted, Charlie and his guide arrived at their destination by daybreak of the second day. The young lancer delivered his dispatches to the officer in command, was received like a brother into a subaltern’s tent, already containing two inhabitants, and slept soundly through the day, till awakened at sunset by a strong appetite for supper, and the absolute necessity for slackening the tent-ropes recorded above. “Kettering, you must join our council of war,” said the cheery voice of the old captain from within; “there’s no man better entitled than yourself to know the contents of my dispatches. Come in, my boy; I can give you a pipe, if nothing else.”