[Interval of some days, during which the British encamp near the farm, and Katinka sells them, at famine prices, every drop of milk and every pound of butter that the cows will yield, and every egg that the hens can be induced to lay.] * * * * * SCENE TWO. The open veldt. Row of kopjes in the middle distance. Enter cavalry patrol with Reginald Talbot Vere-Croesus at their head. (Band playing, "Let 'em all come.") FIRST SOLDIER: I thought I heard a rifle shot. REGINALD TALBOT DE V.-C.: Nay. 'Twas but a soldier being shot for stealing a bar of soap from an enemy's cottage. Serve the miscreant right. Take open order, there. Walk, march! _They ride round the stage with one eye on the kopjes and the other admiring the fit of their breeches. Rifle shots are heard from the kopjes. Band changes to, "You never know your Luck!" Heavy rattle of musketry from kopjes. Patrol driven back and retire to pom-pom accompaniment from the big drum_. R. T. de V.-C. _falls prone from his charger_. KATINKA _rushes in (r.u.e.) weeping hysterically and throws herself on his body_. * * * * * ENTER JACOBUS JOHANNES VAN DER MAUSER _(l.e.), and leans on his rifle, staring gloomily at the scene._ * * * * * JACOBUS: Ha! ha! So it has come to this! She secretly loves the young English officer who reconnoitres kopjes with an eye-glass! (_Sticks his chin out, claws the air and ambles about the stage a la Henry Irving._) But I will be revenged! Ha! ha! I have it! I will go and join the Johannesburg police! False woman, what sayest thou? KATINKA (_hysterically_): I am innocent, Johannes. I am innocent! (_Coils herself round the body of R. T. de V.-C. a la Sarah Bernhardt._) JACOBUS: Innocent! Then why weepest thou? KATINKA (_rising suddenly_): Weep! I should think I _would_ weep. Didn't he owe us three pound seventeen and sixpence for milk! How am I to make the dairy pay if you persist in shooting my best customers? (JACOBUS _embraces her_. REGINALD TALBOT DE VERE-CROESUS _being, fortunately, shot exactly through the head with a Mauser bullet, recovers at once and embraces her also, and joins in a song-and-dance trio, "Be careful what you're doing with the gun," and the curtain falls to the tune of, "It mustn't occur again_.") NOTE.--This farce will be continued till further orders. A. B. P. * * * * * THE WAR ARTIST OF TO-DAY. _To the Editors of_ THE FRIEND,--SIRS,--The present campaign has most decidedly, as your correspondent in THE FRIEND of the 11th says, commenced a new era in the history of illustrated journalism, but not to the extent that he thinks.