brushes between patrols and pickets, wherein the Japanese were always worsted, with the loss of a horse and rifle, or perhaps even of a cooking-stove. But on the very day that the negotiations for the surrender of Port Arthur were opened, a serious interruption to the long inactivity on the Sha-ho occurred. The Russians attempted for the first time a raid on the Japanese line of communications. It was an attempt that an enterprising enemy would have made long before; for it is to be remembered that every mile of the Japanese advance from the sea rendered them increasingly dependent on the railway which they had taken from the Russians. Their army on the Sha-ho was, roughly speaking, more than one hundred miles from the nearest sea-base, Niuchwang; and any interruption to that vulnerable line of communications must inflict much inconvenience at least on Marshal Oyama. The Russians, of course, were exposed to the same risk, and the long line between Mukden and Harbin had, in fact, frequently been cut by the Chunchuses--roving bands of fierce native horsemen, whose hatred for the Muscovite invader had proved a valuable auxiliary to the Japanese. Their activity, in many cases organized and directed by Japanese officers, compelled Kuropatkin to guard jealously every mile of the railway in his rear, and especially every bridge and culvert, and this necessity of maintaining large forces on the lines of communication seriously detracted from the effective strength of his armies in the field. The Russians' idea of giving their enemy tit-tat was at first merely tentative, however. A couple of officers, practically unattended, managed to make their way southward almost as far as Hai-cheng, which is itself some forty or fifty miles south of Liao-yang. There they succeeded in blowing up a culvert and tearing up some yards of railway line--damage which, though not serious in itself, was enough to encourage similar attempts on a larger scale. Kuropatkin knew that the bulk of the army which had been engaged in the siege of Port Arthur was about to be entrained northward, and that with these reinforcements for Oyama were to go the great siege trains which had been employed in battering the ships and fortifications of the captured fortress into submission. To cut off these reinforcements, perhaps to capture train-loads of men and destroy some of the enemy's most formidable artillery, would evidently be a great counter-stroke to the effect produced by the fall of Port Arthur; and so a great Cossack raid was authorized on the Japanese lines of communication. The scheme was admirably conceived and organized, and it achieved at least the first and most important condition of success--namely, a complete surprise. At the outbreak of the war it was predicted in many quarters that what must certainly turn the scale in favor of the Russian arms was Russia's overwhelming superiority in cavalry. The experience of the Boer War had