The enemy are all about the place, and we interview them every morning at daybreak, sometimes exchanging shots, sometimes not. We lay little traps for each other, and vary our manoeuvres with intent to deceive. This advance guard business (we are dealing here with the relief parties of Boers that have come up between us and Bloemfontein) always reminds me of two boxers sparring for an opening. A feint, a tap, a leap back, both sides desperately on the alert and wary. We lost poor Christian yesterday in one of these little encounters. He was mortally wounded in stopping at short range to pick up a friend whose horse had been shot. I have mentioned him, I think, to you in my letters. There was no one in the corps more popular. "Tell the old dad I died game," was what he said when the Major, coming up with supports, knelt down to speak to him. Nothing very noteworthy has occurred since the surrender. The army has been quietly resting, taking stock of the prisoners, and sending them to the railway, and we are expecting every day now the order to advance. The enemy, meanwhile, have been collecting in some force, and are evidently prepared to dispute our march east. Yesterday we had a duel with a gun which they have managed, goodness knows how, to drag up to the top of a commanding hill some miles up the river. However, it was too strongly placed. We lost several men. The enemy's fire was very accurate, and they ended up by sending three shots deliberately one after the other right into our ambulance waggons. We shall be able to post letters to-day, and the reason this one is so extremely dirty is that I am finishing it in a drizzling rain, being on picket guard a couple of miles up the river, not far from the scene of yesterday's shooting. The Boers are on the bustle this morning. One can see them cantering about on the plain just across the river, where thousands of their cattle are grazing. In front the big-gun hill glimmers blue in the mist. Two or three of the enemy have crept up the woody river-course and tried a shot at us; some close; the bullets making a low, quick whistle as they flit overhead. My two companions--there are three of us--are still blazing an indignant reply at the distant bushes. By the amount of fire tap, tap, tapping like an old woodpecker all round the horizon, it seems that there is a sudden wish for a closer acquaintanceship among the pickets generally this morning. Those fellows in the river are at it again! LETTER XIII POPLAR GROVE _March 8_, 1900.