_Brigadier._ "Well, there is not much of De Wet left in this corner of the world. All the commandoes[35] of the Hunt seem to have forgathered here and to be having a day off. What a hole of a place--ideal, no doubt, from the Dutchman's point of view. Why, the smell of it reaches up here. But here comes a robber in a pink 'beaver'; we shall soon know all about it." A diminutive boy in staff kit cantered up and demanded information about the column. _Staff Officer._ "What column is this?" _B._ "The New Cavalry Brigade." _S. O._ "Never heard of you. Who told you to come in here? Who commands you?" _B._ "Steady, my fledgling, one question at a time. You are given to heaping matters, I see, which is a bad habit in one so young. I will answer one of your questions, the last one. I command this column: and now you will answer me. What columns are in Hopetown?" _S. O._ "Sorry, sir, but----" _B._ "Don't apologise. I know I don't look like a general, but it doesn't help you out of your difficulties to say so. You only slip into it worse every time; now, then, to the columns?" _S. O._ "Knox's, Pilcher's, Plumer's, and Paris's." _B._ "Good; and what is the latest news about De Wet?" _S. O._ "He has broken out east across the railway; half his force went up north and half crossed by Paauwpan or Potfontein." _B._ "Who are on him?" _S. O._ "I am not quite sure; but I hear that Haig, Thorneycroft, Crabbe and Henniker are either following him or trying to cut him off." _B._ "And what are four columns doing halted here in this _dorp_?"[36] _S. O._ "They are all stone cold." _B._ "The price of losing De Wet. Now, young feller, just you hie back to _your_ general, Charles Knox, I suppose, and tell him that the New Cavalry Brigade is coming right in here, but will not worry him long, as it has orders to be off to-night. (_The youth salutes and goes to the right-about, while the brigadier continues to his staff_) Just as well to let Knox know that I am on my own. I must invent a special mission from Pretoria, otherwise he may seize me like the last fellow, and the future state of this column might then be worse than the first." In the meantime the brigade led down into the noisome basin which holds Hopetown, and took up temporary quarters on the first patch against the water into which it could squeeze its long line of transport. It wedged in between two columns, and the bad condition of both gave evidence of the severity of the work in which they had recently been engaged. As columns, when they had first entered upon the chase after De Wet, they had each been five or six hundred strong; now, perhaps, between them they could count five hundred mounted men, while of this number not more than a third were fit to do a twenty-mile trek at a better pace than a walk. Yet each, three weeks earlier, had started from the railway newly equipped with remounts.