challenge you answer "A friend," and, dog-tired, you re-enter the lines, welcomed by his sesame call, "Pass, friend; all is well." IMPRESSIONS OF A WAR CORRESPONDENT I THE DANCE OF DEATH Death from a Mauser bullet is less painful than the drawing of a tooth. Such, at least, appears to be the case, speaking generally from apparent evidence, without having the opportunity of collecting the opinions of those who have actually died. In books we have read of shrieks of expiring agony; but ask those who have been on many battlefields, and they will not tell you they have heard them. As a rule a sudden exclamation, "I'm hit!" "My God!" "Damn it!" They look as if staggering from the blow of a fist rather than that from a tiny pencil of lead--then a sudden paleness, perhaps a grasping of the hands occasionally as if to hold on to something, when the bottom seems to be falling out of all things stable, but generally no sign of aught else than the dulling of death--dulling to sleep--a drunken sleep--drunken death it often seems--very commonplace as a rule. A smile as often as, or oftener than, any sign of pain, but generally no sign of either. Think of this, mourning mothers of England. Don't picture your sons as drowning out of the world racked with the red torture from the bullet's track, but just as dropping off dully to sleep, most probably with no thought of you or home, without anxiety or regret. Merciful Mauser! He suffered much more pain when you brought him long ago to the dentist, and his agony in that horrible chair was infinitely greater than on his bed on the veldt. Merciful Mauser be thanked! The first man I saw badly hit during the war was a Devon at Elandslaagte, just after they had advanced within rifle-range. He was shot through the head, and it seemed quite useless for the bearers to take the trouble of carrying him off the field; yet they went back looking in vain for a field ambulance. They carried him instead to the cart belonging to a well-known war correspondent. The owner had given the driver strict orders to remain where he was until his return, but the shells were falling around the cart, which, in fact, seemed to be made a mark of by the Boer gunners--perhaps they thought it belonged to one of our generals, whom they may have imagined had taken to driving, like Joubert and some others of theirs. The arrival of the wounded man was a great godsend to the driver, who immediately, with the most humane insistence, offered to drive him to the nearest field hospital. Neither cart nor driver was again seen until long after the battle was over, about nine o'clock in the evening. Strange to say, the man recovered from his wound.