I asked him if he had ever of his own knowledge come into contact with anything savouring of white flag treachery.  “Once I did,” said the great scout, and for a while his eyes were filled with a sombre fire which spoke of the volcano under the genial human crust.  “Onct,” and he lapsed into the brogue as he spoke; “only onct, and there’s a debt owin’ on it yet which has got to be paid.  It was at Karronna Ridge.  I was out wid me scouts, ’nd I saw a farmhouse flying the white flag—­a great flag it was, too, as big as a bed sheet.  I’m not sure that it was not wan, too.  I rode towards it, thinking the people wanted to surrender, and sent two of me men, two young lads they were—­good boys, eager for duty.  I sent ’em forward to ask what was the matther inside; and when they got within fifteen paces of the house the Boers inside opened fire from twenty rifles, and blew ’em out of the saddle.  I had to ride with me little troop for dear life then, for the rocks all around us were alive with rifles.  That house still stands; but if Driscoll’s name is Driscoll it’s going to burn, and the cur who flew the white flag in it, if I can get him, for the sake of the dead boys out on the veldt there.  That’s the only dirty trick I knew them play, and they must have been a lot of wasters, not like the general run of their fighters.”

Three nights ago Driscoll, Davies, Brabant, and twenty men camped in a farmhouse a long way from the British lines, for these men scour the country for many miles in all directions.  The night was cold and rough, a bleak wind whistling amidst the kopjes half a mile away.  Just as the scouts were sitting down to supper, the farmer’s wife rushed in, and said to Driscoll, in a voice between a sob and a scream, “Do you know, sir, that our burghers are in the kopjes, and are watching the farm?” and as she spoke she wrung her hands wildly.  The Irish scout rose from the table and bowed, as only an Irish scout can bow, for the “vrow” was about thirty years of age, and pleasing to the eye beyond the lot of most women.  “I am awfully glad to hear it, madam,” he said in his execrable Dutch.  “I’ve been looking for that commando for a week past.  As they have doubtless sent a message by you, please send this back for me.  Tell their officers, if they will accept an offer to come and dine with Driscoll’s Scouts here to-night, they shall be made welcome to the best we have in the way of kindness.  For it must be cold waiting outside in the wind.  Tell them they shall go as they come, unmolested and unwatched, and in the morning we’ll come out and give ’em all the fight they want in this world.”  Then, sweeping the floor with a graceful wave of his green puggareed soft slouch hat, Driscoll bowed the astonished dame out of the dining-room, whilst his officers and men nearly choked themselves with their hot soup, as they noticed him surreptitiously drawing a pocket mirror from his breeches pocket.  For well they knew that the dare-devil leader was thinking far more of the effect his looks had had on the Dutch housewife than of the effect of his message on the enemy.  Yet, at the first promise of dawn, he unrolled himself from his blanket on the hard floor, and was the foremost man to show in the open, where the enemy’s rifles might reach him.  But no rifles sounded, for the Boers had declined the invitation both to supper and breakfast.