heads in the presence of triumphant enemies, those men were the troopers of Lumsden’s Horse who had sacrificed themselves rather than abandon a wounded comrade. One of them, Corporal Firth, a prisoner in the hands of the Boers, wrote to his parents from Waterval on May 7, 1900: You will by this time have seen that I am now a prisoner of war from the published lists in the papers. I will just give you an outline of what happened on the 30th ult. An officer, two non-commissioned officers, and eleven men were told off to hold a hill as a guard against an attack on the right of a body advancing from our centre; this centre body had to retire, and we, receiving no orders, held on as long as possible until forced to retire, which we did, having five killed, our officer wounded, and four taken prisoners, leaving only four who escaped to tell the tale. I could have got away, only went back to the assistance of our officer, who was wounded about ten yards behind me. I bound him up under a heavy fire, and Providence must have watched over me that day, as bullets in hundreds were flying all round me. I am in good health and received very kind treatment from the hands of my captors, of which I will write more on another occasion, as I am not yet settled down in my new surroundings. How he and his fellow-prisoners fared after they had fallen into the power of their enemies is a story told with graphic picturesqueness in the following letters from Sergeant Fraser, who was surrounded by Boers when he lay bruised by a heavy fall in company with Trooper Saunders, who had gallantly risked his own life in an attempt to bring Fraser out from under fire: [Illustration: _Photo: Johnston and Hoffmann._ SERGEANT DAVID S. FRASER ] We had imagined that our destination was comparatively close, but we covered mile after mile without any more satisfaction from our guards than that it was over the next kopje. The column wound in and out among many hills ere a halt was called. Though we had started about 11 in the morning, it was not until 4 o’clock in the afternoon that our escort stopped at an ambulance tent, which was in charge of a hospitable Swiss doctor. We had had nothing to eat all day. In the hurry of getting ready so early in the morning neither of us had time to think of food, and our day’s rations were in our saddles, now in the hands of the Boers. So the good Swiss fed us plentifully with soup, meat, and coffee. He examined me and found only bruises. Saunders’s arm was much swollen, and the surgeon could not ascertain what the damage was. It afterwards turned out that the muscles were lacerated and one of the bones in the forearm cracked.