It is somewhat interesting here to note Mr. Churchill's soliloquy on his journey in an armoured train, published in the _Morning Post_ at the very time the noble fellow was suffering for his bravery on an identical trip. "This armoured train," he said, "is a very puny specimen, having neither gun nor Maxims, with no roof to its trucks and no shutters to its loopholes, and being in every way inferior to the powerful machines I saw working along the southern frontier. Nevertheless it is a useful means of reconnaissance, nor is a journey in it devoid of interest. An armoured train! The very name sounds strange; a locomotive disguised as a knight-errant--the agent of civilisation in the habiliments of chivalry. Mr. Morley attired as Sir Lancelot would seem scarcely more incongruous. The possibilities of attack added to the keenness of the experience. We started at one o'clock. A company of the Dublin Fusiliers formed the garrison. Half were in the car in front of the engine, half in that behind. Three empty trucks, with a plate-laying gang and spare rails to mend the line, followed. The country between Estcourt and Colenso is open, undulating, and grassy. The stations, which occur every four or five miles, are hamlets consisting of half-a-dozen corrugated iron houses, and perhaps a score of blue gum trees. These little specks of habitation are almost the only marked feature of the landscape, which on all sides spreads in pleasant but monotonous slopes of green. The train maintained a good speed; and, though it stopped repeatedly to question Kaffirs or country folk, and to communicate with the cyclists and other patrols who were scouring the country on the flanks, reached Chieveley, five miles from Colenso, by about three o'clock; and from here the Ladysmith balloon, a brown speck floating above and beyond the distant hills, was plainly visible. "Beyond Chieveley it was necessary to observe more caution. The speed was reduced--the engine walked warily. The railway officials scanned the track, and often before a culvert or bridge was traversed we disembarked and examined it from the ground. At other times long halts were made while the officers swept the horizon and the distant hills with field-glasses and telescopes. But the country was clear and the line undamaged, and we continued our slow advance." Little did he know when these thoughts passed though his busy brain that in a few days he would find himself in the State School of Pretoria, a prisoner, far from kith and kin, and uncertain whether or not he, like others, might be tried by Judge Gregorowski, who would take a grim pleasure, as he did in the case of the Uitlanders, in sentencing him to death. On this score great anxiety was felt, and it is no exaggeration to say that his countrymen, whether friends or strangers, were all equally regretful at his loss, and deeply anxious as to the fate that might befall so gallant a descendant of a great line.