Parade services, of course, received careful attention, and were largely attended.  But such services, however picturesque and interesting, are but a small part of the chaplain’s duty.  He makes them the centre of his work, for at no other time can he get so many of his men around him; and standing there at the drumhead, he gives God’s message with all the power he can command.

But, after all, it is in quieter, homelier work that he succeeds the best.  Mr. Burgess, for instance, tells us how he began his open-air work.  He went over to the Royal Scots camp, and, as soon as the band had finished playing, stepped into the ring.  It might have been a shell that had dropped into that ring by the speed with which all the soldiers cleared away from it! and the preacher, who had hoped he could hold the crowd which the band had gathered, was woefully disappointed.  However, he commenced to sing,—­

    ‘Hold the fort,’

and he had not long to hold it by himself.  Before he had finished the hymn other soldiers had gathered courage, and he had a crowd of two or three hundred round him, and at the close of the service there were many earnest requests to come again.

Thus night by night, in the tent and in the open air, Christ was preached.  Perhaps, however, the most blessed of all the services were the meetings of Christian soldiers upon the veldt.  Here and there among Mr. Burgess’s letters one chances on such passages as this:—­

’At 7.30 p.m. eight of us went a little distance from the tents into the veldt, and read the fifteenth chapter of St. John’s Gospel together, and knelt down on the grass, and had a happy time in prayer.  The lads got back to their tents in time for the first post, when the roll is called.’

Such records as these give us a glimpse of the Christian soldier’s life at once beautiful and pathetic.  Such intercourse must have been of the sweetest character; and, far away from home and friends, they drew very near to God.

For weeks from this time Mr. Burgess’s letters are full of stories of conversion.  Now a corporal that he chats with at the close of a hard day’s work, now the trumpeter of the regiment, now several together at the close of an open-air service.  Thus all workers rejoiced together in ever continued success, and the greatest joy of all—­the joy of harvest—­was theirs.

But the time of inactivity was over.  For weeks reinforcements had been gathering, and the chaplains’ work had covered a larger area.  It was now time to strike their tents and march.  But this unfortunate column was unfortunate still.  With the memory of the disaster to the Northumberland Fusiliers at Stormberg still in their minds they marched forward, only to meet with fresh disaster at Reddersburg.

=The Disaster at Reddersburg.=

Perhaps the best account of that disaster is given by the Rev. W.C.  Burgess in a letter to the Rev. E.P.  Lowry; and as it gives a vivid picture of a chaplain’s work under exceedingly difficult circumstances, we venture to quote at some length from the Methodist Times:—­