to South united them. They met on the summit not long after two o'clock, sunburnt, dirty, and weary of eyelid, for the test was severe to a degree, but keen of eye and showing a pride in their work which it was a treat to witness. An American critic has said that the town-bred soldier is in the long run the most enduring of the various military types because in the hard struggle for life in the city he represents the survival of the fittest. It is worthy of note that the first to finish the task on this occasion was a young townbred soldier recruited in Belfast, and he showed less fatigue than any of the competitors.

At the top of Slieve Donard is a large cairn and beneath it local tradition declares the saintly Donard (who was ever fond of solitude) lies buried; quite close is a well named St. Donard's Well.

Under the shelter of this cairn the examination of all those who actually reached the finish was conducted, and all reports, maps and sketches were collected, but of the whole lot that started a bare half completed the course, fatigue, mis-reading of orders and careless following of the map accounting for the rest. Yet from those that did turn up in our somewhat original and roofless examination hall we obtained all the information that the commander at Kilbroney River might possibly require and much more than we expected; in fact if only one-third of those who started had arrived we should have had ample reports to go upon. Instruction was thus provided for ourselves, for as one of our number pointed out, we had unwittingly proved the wisdom of Berthier's habit of always dispatching four messengers when most men thought one would do, a practice that Soult to his detriment was prone to disregard. The written reports were extremely good, the rough sketching (by the private soldier, remember) would have been of much value to any commander, one sketch in particular being almost good enough for the illustration of a book, the verbal reports were clear and of a most intelligent type. I have mentioned that the instructions which we gave to the scouts resulted in one very pretty piece of work. It was as follows: Company marches were being carried out in the district-that is, companies were manœuvring for a specified period of several days under their commanders complete as small columns and making all arrangements for feeding, camping, &c., in the country through which they passed, and during the course of our competition a company from a neighbouring camp was traversing unknown to us the Shimna River Valley. A Connaught Ranger scout detected it in

the distance, made his way to an overhanging spur, successfully concealed himself so that he was able to observe everything, and brought in the most detailed information as regards strength, rank, number, and apparent age of officers, numbers of non-commissioned officers and of men, type and capacity of transport, in fact he left nothing unreported. Questioned as regards the dummy bivouac, all were reticent, and at first it seemed as if none had noticed it, although the officer at our Salamanca had observed the scouts standing over it. Though very carefully constructed it apparently had not been deemed genuine by them, they looked upon it as a trap to test their capacity to tell the true from the false and so rather disregarded it, and for that reason those whom we questioned seemed to adopt the attitude that they were not going to give themselves away. At last one soldier said to me: 'I could not find any evidence of any of the enemy's patrols having passed through the mountains.' 'Did you find nothing?' I asked. Then the keen power of observation showed itself. 'Oh, yes,' he replied. 'As I crossed Shanky's River by the small footbridge last evening, I noticed the marks of rubber-tyred wheels in the bed of the stream, and, knowing that the road is only used by carts going to the bog, I drew Sergeant Gallivan's attention to the tracks, so we went back again and found the wheelmarks on the road with horse-prints going both directions, and we then proceeded again towards the bog and found the tracks went up to the hilltop, where they stopped and turned round, though it was hard to trace them because the road was dry. Again returning to the stream we found the tracks were double, and we made up our minds that it was a hack car that had gone out and returned. Then we met an old woman and she told me a car had been there with an officer, and that he had dropped something, which I looked for and found; it was an empty cartridge-case. I found no real evidence of any patrol of an enemy.' A good deal of the true scout in that nature.

This conversation was barely concluded when the officer in observation in the hills during the night arrived, and from him we learnt that the groups had met fairly well the night before, but that there were some serious defects of knowledge to note, for one group of four had lain down to rest in a sandpit without setting a watch of any kind, and on starting again had taken a wrong bearing, and gone due North, an error repeated by other individual scouts, while others had been unable to continue the strain and were making direct for Newcastle. We then turned to the final test of

the competition, the use of field-glasses and telescopes, of which we had a goodly number of the best type, and for this trial of skill we had placed under orders unknown to any of the competitors, at points about five miles off, small bodies of troops in conspicuous places supposed to represent the enemy's outposts, and although the evening was very bright and clear, yet it was quite impossible to' pick up' a single soldier, in spite of the fact that we as judges were aware of their dispositions. Looking at Slieve Donard from the ground where these picquets and sentries were posted, it is perfectly easy with strong glasses to discern people moving on the summit, yet when the position was reversed we could read nothing at all, the angle of downward sight being so steep as to obliterate everything except the bold features of the country side.

After allowing reasonable law for stragglers to come in, we commenced to descend, leaving in a conspicuous place on top of St. Donard's cairn an empty bottle (yes, quite right, it had been full) containing a message to the effect that all parties had left the mountain. The emptying of that bottle was very refreshing to all of us, while the scouts showed a keen appreciation of a very necessary stimulant, nor did they exhibit any desire to enter into a controversy as to whether seven-year-old or ten-year-old is the best.

At the station we met a party of officers keenly interested in the contest, some indeed had been up country a bit to observe, and all warmly congratulated the winners (the Connaught Rangers group), who had certainly given a fine exhibition of training, grit, and keen intelligence.

Telegraphic inquiries were set on foot and all the missing were reported safe by the following morning. At the beginning we had had misgivings as to the practicability of some details of the contest; at the close we realised that severe though the conditions had been it had been full of interest, revealing an unexpected degree of intelligence in the competitors, and one could not look at the grimy travel-stained scouts without feeling a glow of pleasure in the contemplation of the British soldier still as ever primus inter pares.

Nor had they been competitors only, for we who had had to devise the scheme had also derived considerable instruction from their work, the story of which I trust may prove as attractive to read, as the work it describes was a genuine treat to witness.

EDWARD MACARTNEY-FILGATE.

1 A special prize for the best individual work was awarded to Sergeant Andrews, 2nd West Yorkshire Regiment.

TEXAS JACK AND THE BOTTICELLIS.

It was long ago in Florence that I met him, when I was but a lad of twenty-one-so long ago that it seems safe to talk about him. His name was not Texas Jack; he may never have seen Texas. Except for the mere fact that he was an American, I do not know where he came from, nor do I know whither he has gone, and it is only a single episode in his life that I am going to tell. The name that he wrote in the pension register was James C. Bunton, but I have no reason to think that it was his own, for he was emphatically a gentleman with a past. We called him Texas Jack because of his huge, raw-boned figure, because of two significant scars upon his face, and an air of bravado constantly breaking through an intentionally quiet way he had of doing things. His manner was that of a man who remembered that, among the civilised, he must not forget to be peaceable, and the white, volcanic repose of his face always suggested a pause between fury past and fury to come. He looked about forty-five, but whether old in years or old in sin nobody could tell.

At table the little band of young artists to which I belonged found endless fascination in watching Texas Jack. There was a laboured carefulness both about his use of the fork and about his English; and the occasional uncertainty in the management of his knife in cutting meat hinted other purposes to which it might be put. He spoke in the gentlest voice, yet, to us, in the gleeful exaggeration of youth, it always suggested pistol shots, and his right hand never made a quick motion without causing me to jump a bit; was it feeling for something in his hip pocket? Sometimes I wished that we had gone to some other pension. Those great sinewy hands could have wrung any neck at the table, and more than once I found myself wondering whether I should show presence of mind in extreme danger. I had an idea that I could tell better if I knew beforehand what the danger was to be.

Of Mrs. James C. Bunton we saw little, for she was indisposed much of the time, and had meals sent to her room. When she did appear, a frightened-looking woman with appealing blue eyes and fading brown hair, we greatly admired Texas Jack's chivalry in

looking after her, though we wondered at his air of triumph in so doing. It was totally disproportionate to her outward charm, at least. With the gentlest possible hands he would adjust her wrap or help her downstairs, yet his face at these moments wore an almost savage look of delight in possession, as if he were proud that the chiefest among his goods and chattels was a human being. That he was wealthy, her clothing and jewels-neither in very good taste, and both at variance with a certain delicacy in outline in the wearer-proved abundantly. Why they had come to so modest a pension was cause for wonder, until we realised that Mr. Bunton had yielded to her timid desire to stop in a quiet place. That he cared about her was evident in many ways, but we were all puzzled by her attitude toward him. Sometimes she seemed to cling to him in confidence, but oftener the look of fear in her blue eyes suggested that many moments of her married life were as crises in a melodrama.

It

One morning I walked to the Uffizi Gallery, to work on my copy of Raphael's portrait of himself, for I was not yet launched on my career, and was content to do copying for bread and butter. was one of those dull days of cloud which come even to Florence, so blurring outlines and defacing colours that entry into this charmed spot, with its relief of exquisite lines and subtle shades, seemed like admission to a world more fully created than that without. I was thinking, a bit complacently, of this refuge of finer appreciation known only to artist souls, when my eyes met an astounding sight. There, standing before Botticelli's wistful Madonna of the Pomegranate,' stood Texas Jack, completely absorbed, his body limp, but something within him which I had never seen before, alert and quickening. That face which had been a grindstone for men's swords softened curiously, crumbled, if I may use the term, breaking into gentler lines. It was plainly his first glimpse of a Botticelli-for aught I know it may have been his first glimpse of any picture save chromos-and its appealing pathos had clearly overwhelmed him. I saw him tiptoe nearer, and, with a huge forefinger that did not quite touch the canvas, follow the outline of the mother's arm as it curves round the child. Forgetting that I reached only to his shoulder, I tried to put myself between him and the approaching guard, when he turned and faced me. You ever seen this before?' he asked with a deep-drawn breath.

'Yes.'