Of the prisoners of war thus long detained in durance vile nearly a thousand were decoyed into a special train the night before the Guards' Brigade reached Pretoria. These deluded captives in their simplicity supposed they were being taken into the town to be there set at liberty; but instead of that they were hurried by, and, with the panic-stricken Boers, away and yet away, into their remotest eastern fastnesses, there presumably to be retained as long as possible as a sort of guarantee that the vastly larger number of Boers we held prisoners should be still generously treated by us. They might also prove useful in many ways if terms of peace came to be negotiated. So vanished for months their visions of speedy freedom! The rest who still remained within the prison fence, and were, of course, still unarmed, three days later were cruelly and treacherously shelled by a Boer commando on a distant hill. The Boer guards detailed for duty at the prison had deserted their posts, and under the cover of the white flag, gone into Pretoria to surrender. Our men, therefore, who were practically free, awaiting orders, when thus unceremoniously shelled, at once stampeded; and late on Thursday night about nine hundred of them, footsore and famished, arrived at Mr Goodwin's house seeking shelter. He was apparently the only friend they knew in Pretoria, and to have a friend yet not to use him is, of course, absurd! So to his door they came in crowds, dragging with them the Boer Maxim gun, by which they had so long been overawed. While tea and coffee for all this host were being hurriedly prepared by their slightly embarrassed host, I sought permission from a staff officer to house the men for the night in our Wesleyan schoolrooms, and in the huge Caledonian Hall adjoining, which was at once commandeered for the purpose. I also requested that a supply of rations might at utmost speed be provided for them. Accordingly, not long before midnight a waggon arrived bringing by some fortunate misreading of my information, provisions, not for nine hundred hungry men, but for the whole three thousand prisoners whom we were supposed to have welcomed as our guests. It may seem incredible, but men who at that late hour had fallen fast asleep upon the floor, at the sound of that waggon's wheels suddenly awoke; and still more wonderful to tell, when morning came those nine hundred men, of the rations for three thousand, had left untouched only a few paltry boxes of biscuits. A hospital patient recently recovered from fever once said to me, "I haven't an appetite for two, sir; I have an appetite for ten!" And these released prisoners had evidently for that particular occasion borrowed the appetite of that particular patient! [Sidenote: _The Soldiers' Home._]