missing.  Well, then, what’s this?  A letter; but the envelope’s gone.  Let me see the signature at the end.  Ah, just as I thought, “Your loving mother!” God help her, poor body!  Ah, boys, don’t forget the dear mother in the old home.  She never forgets you, but morning, noon, and night thinks and prays for her soldier-son.  Mindfulness of her brings God’s blessing; forgetfulness bitter remorse, when too late—­after she’s gone.  There’s something more in the breast-pocket.  His parchment probably.  No; something better still—­a small copy of St. John’s Gospel, with his name thereon.  Let us hope that its presence there, when every extra ounce carried was a weighty consideration, is more than suggestive of thoughts of higher things.  Pass on.  No identity card on this body either, but another letter—­a sweetheart’s one.  Oh, the poetry and pathos, the comedy and tragedy of love’s young dream!  Please see this burnt, sergeant; I don’t wish others to read what was meant for his eye alone.  Poor lassie!  She’ll feel it for a while; but Time is the great healer, and the young heart has wonderfully recuperative powers.  There are only two kinds of love, men, that last till death and after—­your mother’s love and your God’s—­and both are yours, yearning for a return.

’Oh, here’s a sad group—­seven, eight, nine, close together.  Who’s that in front?  An officer.  I thought as much. Noblesse oblige.  Yes, I know him.  Are we to bring him with the others? did you ask.  Certainly.  What more appropriate resting-place than with the men he so nobly led, and who so gallantly followed him—­all alike faithful to the death, giving their life for Queen and country!  Pass on.  Here are three, one close after the other, as they moved from the cover of this small donga.  I saw them fall, vieing with one another for a foremost place, for here “honour travelled in a strait so narrow that only one could go abreast.”  All three mere boys, but with the hearts of heroes.  A book, did you say, in every one of their pockets? Prayers for Soldiers—­well marked, too.  My friend was right, dear mothers.  There is some comfort in the sadness—­a gleam of sunshine showing through the gloom.

’Ah, how thick they lie!  What a deadly hail of Mausers must have come from that rock-ribbed clump on the kopje.  Three—­and—­twenty officers and men, promiscuously blent; and fully more on that little rise over there, as they showed in sight.  God help their wives and mothers, and strengthen me for this sacred duty!  Nay, men, don’t turn away to hide the rising sob and tear.  I’m past that.  I’ve got a new ordination in blood and tears.  It’s nothing to be ashamed of—­so far the opposite, it does you honour, for “men of finest steel are men who keenest feel.”  Look at this man with the field-dressing in his hand, shot while necessarily exposing himself, trying to do what he could for a wounded comrade.  Noble, self-sacrificing fellow!  Such deeds