A thing happened in connection with this Boer ammunition which shows once more how very easy it is to attribute all kinds of sins to one's enemy. Someone came running up to a little group of us with several packets of cartridges, one with the seal broken. "Here's a pretty thing," he said; "poisoned bullets--the brutes!" Sure enough, there were the steel bullets projecting out of the cartridges, each completely coated with something very like verdigris up to the edge of the brass envelope. The sealed packets showed that they must have been so received from the makers, which easily proved the most premeditated barbarity. Exclamations were rife; a brigadier was making notes in his pocket-book; someone was urging a correspondent to send home a cable announcing the fact, when a man, who had been sitting quietly through it all, said-- "That's all very well, but how about the rifling in the barrel? I guess there wouldn't be much of that stuff left on by the time the bullet was spinning." Silence fell like a cloud on the group, and the bubble was finally pricked when another officer came up and said-- "More bad grease! I've had to chuck out half a box of ammunition because the grease has gone bad and fouls the rifles." Of course; it was as simple as day. The bullets had, as usual, been dipped in grease to preserve them, and the grease had gone bad. When I returned to the little circle there was an animated conversation in progress on the subject of visiting patrols. We marched in next day, eighteen miles, having covered a pear-shaped track eastwards of about forty miles, while the men behaved like Trojans under most uncomfortable circumstances. We remained for some days in camp, waiting for Lord Roberts to move, and fighting no more dangerous enemy than the wet and boisterous weather of young winter. Certainly Lord Methuen had a fine force there, well tried and in excellent condition, and we all hoped that he might be given a chance to do something with it. There is something at once lonely and lofty in the position of a General Officer in the field that wins one's sympathy. You see it most plainly at a full church parade such as was held on Easter Sunday, when the whole force was formed into a hollow square. Walls of living faces; before them, a few paces, company officers; before them again, commanding officers; the chaplain in the middle; and then the pleasant-looking Guardsman striding into his place in front of all and saluting the chaplain--the only person to whom that honour is rendered. After the short service the General's position is still more sharply indicated, when the shouting of orders takes the place of the parson's placid tones.