Highlanders were counted.  There were fewer, and Jock was stunned at first.  “Ah, but ye ha’ not counted the thun rred line,” he shouted.  “Ga’rn, what battle’s that?” they scoffed.  “The battle of the thun rred line,” he persisted.  Balaclava was on his list, but he didn’t even know it was there that his gallant regiment formed the thin red line.  Yet he had his revenge, for, by a laborious calculation, lasting several hours, it was found that the united honours of the Scotch regiments were greater than the united English or Irish.

September 6.—­Thursday.—­I am allowed to go to a chair outside the tent, a long, luxurious canvas lounge.  In the valley below and to the right lies Pretoria, half buried in trees, and looking very pretty.  Behind it rises a range of hills, with a couple of forts on the sky-line.  Across the valley lies quite a town of tents, mostly hospitals.  We all of us live in pyjamas; some wear also a long coat of bright blue.  Sisters flit about, dressed in light blue, with white aprons and veils, and brilliant scarlet capes, so that there is no lack of vivid colour.  A road runs in front of the tent; an occasional orderly gallops past, or a carriage passes with officers.

September 7.—­To my delight this afternoon, I heard a voice at my tent door, saying, “Is Childers here?” It turned out to be Bagenal, one of the released Irish Yeomanry, and a friend of Henry’s, who had come from him to look for me.  Henry is wounded in the foot, but now “right as rain.”  He is in the Convalescent Camp, which is plainly visible from here, about a mile off.  It seems that by another lucky coincidence he received letters meant for me, and so knew I was in Pretoria.  The whole affair abounds in coincidences, for had I answered the cable home I should have said “foot slight,” or something like it, and he would have said the same.  It would have done for either.  We are lucky to have found one another, for the Secretary’s inquiries led to nothing.

I have been reading in the Bloemfontein Post a report of the Hospital Commission.  I have no experience of General Hospitals, but some of the evidence brings out a point which is heightened by contrast with a hospital like this, and that is the importance of close supervision of orderlies, on whom most of the comfort of a patient depends.  To take one instance only; if a man here is ordered port wine, it is given him personally by the Sister.  To give orderlies control of wine and spirits is tempting them most unfairly.  On the whole, I should say this hospital was pretty well perfect.  The Sisters are kindness itself.  The orderlies are well-trained, obliging, and strictly supervised.  The Civil Surgeon, Dr. Williams, is both skilful and warm-hearted.  There is plenty of everything, and absolute cleanliness and order.

The Strange Story of the Occupation and Surrender of Klerksdorp, as told by a Trooper of the Kimberley Light Horse, taken Prisoner about July 10, by De Wet, released at Warm Baths on August 28, and now in this ward.