Lieut. Stacpole (Northumberland Fusiliers) was also wounded on the 4th. He was riding for reinforcements, and as he approached Reddersburg, unknowing the place was in the hands of the Boers, he was greeted with shots which killed his horse, wounded him, and placed him at the mercy of the enemy, by whom he was captured. The Boers in their retreat, however, left their prisoners behind. The total of killed and wounded numbered between 50 and 150. The strength of the British was 167 mounted infantry, 424 infantry. The enemy were said to be 3200 strong. The unlucky termination of the affair completed the eastern flanking movement of the Boers, who were now trickling over the country from Sanna's Post on the south to a point east of Jagersfontein road. They soon held the Free State east of the railway beyond Bethulie, and considerable numbers went south towards Smithfield and Rouxville, their determination, after their recent successes, being to harass the British force as much as possible. It was now becoming evident that all the present trouble was due to over-leniency, and it began to be urged that some measures must be adopted which would ensure for the conquerors of the enemy's country the respect that was due to them. The humanitarian attitude of Lord Roberts had produced an unlooked-for result. The Commander-in-Chief had attempted to administer justice for a seventeenth-century people on the ethics of those of the nineteenth, and the experiment had proved disastrous. The enemy, far from being impressed by the show of magnanimity, was laughing in his sleeve at his immunity from pains and penalties. Our troops were forced now to move in a country where nearly every man was a foe or a spy, and one who, moreover, thought meanly of us for the concessions which had been made. As an instance of contrast between our own and the Dutchman's mode of dealing with those considered as rebels, an instructive story was told. A Free State burgher at the outset of hostilities entered the Imperial service as a conductor of transport. It was a non-combatant's occupation, and one for which he was fitted, owing to his knowledge of the Kaffir and Dutch languages. This man was captured by the Boers, who, declaring him to be a rebel, instantly shot him dead. We, on the other hand, accepted an obsolete rifle, a flint-lock elephant gun belonging to the days of the Great Trek perhaps, as a peace-offering and then told the rebel to go away and turn over a new leaf. His new leaf resolved itself into unearthing Mausers and Martinis, and popping at us from the first convenient kopje--if not from the windows of his farm!