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None of the party had returned, so reprieved for the present she went up to the nursery. Freddy was roaring on his back, he had just thrown "Peep-of-Day" at the nurse's head, which had been unwisely offered to him as a substitute for his favourite trumpet, when its excruciating blasts become too unbearable.
At 8 o'clock we turned into a large field, and now expected to go into camp. But in this were disappointed, for an hour later we were again ordered to proceed. Near midnight we turned into a cornfield, and, after considerable maneuvering, were ordered to pitch tents. At peep-of-day, on the morning of September 18th, the camp was astir.
The moment they had embarked, Peep-of-Day Boys, Heart-of-Oak Boys, Twelve-o'-clock Boys, Heart-of-Flint Boys, and all the bloody boyhood of the Bog of Allen, would have proceeded to the ancient work of riot, rapine, and disaffection.
This dawning process went on for above two years to come, painfully, reluctantly, with explosions, even with tears. But here, directly on the back of Seckendorf's proposal, and recorded from a sure hand, is what we may call the peep-of-day in that matter: First Session of Tobacco-Parliament, close after that event.
The former had made an association known as the "Peep-of-day boys," to which the latter had responded by one called the "Defenders." In 1795 a regular battle was fought between the two, and the "Defenders" were defeated with the loss of many lives. The same year saw the institution of Orange Lodges spring into existence, and spread rapidly over the north.
I am quite sure that it is this state of feeling amongst the lower Irish that has created White Boys, Peep-of-day Boys, Ribbon Men, and all the various classes of incendiaries and desperadoes of which we hear so much from Ireland.
While in Ireland, which, as mentioned, is their grand parent hive, they go by a perplexing multiplicity of designations, such as Bogtrotters, Redshanks, Ribbonmen, Cottiers, Peep-of-Day Boys, Babes of the Wood, Rockites, Poor-Slaves: which last, however, seems to be the primary and generic name; whereto, probably enough, the others are only subsidiary species, or slight varieties; or, at most, propagated offsets from the parent stem, whose minute subdivisions, and shades of difference, it were here loss of time to dwell on.
The Boer hill was four or five miles distant, north across the plain. All along its purple sides we ranged with our glasses, seeing nothing; but after dark several little points of light showed where their laager was. We sat all night among the rocks (I thought of you and the roast-turkey and holly), occasional heavy drops of rain falling, and a flicker of lightning now and then. Heavy clouds rolled up, and the night set in as dark as pitch. The level plain below us lay flat as a pancake from their hill to ours. So passed our '99 Christmas, picturesque possibly, but not very comfortable. Dark hillside; rain in large warm drops; night dark, with a star or two and struggling moon. In front, a distant hillside, with points of camp-fire twinkling, where the Boers, indifferent to our little party, were carousing and drinking their dop. Now and then a yawn or groan as a man stretches his cramped limbs. Down below under us an expanse of dark plain, like a murky sea, reaching to our feet, which we peer across, but can make out nothing. Peep-of-day time is the Boer's favourite hour for a call, and we were all very much on the qui vive when the white line showed along the east. No doubt, however, they all had such heads after their Christmas drink that they were in no humour for such a diversion. At any rate, they let us alone. Very stiff and weary and wet, we crept down the hill soon after daybreak and started on our twenty-mile homeward march. It was 5 P.M. before we reached camp, and we had had nothing to eat all day. I don't know if we were most tired or hungry. Take that three days as a sample of work. We start at 6 A.M. on Sunday; do a full day's riding and scouting, and get three hours' sleep that night at Enslin. Then we saddle up and pass the rest of the night and all the next day riding, except when we are climbing hills on foot to look out. The second night we sit among the hills expecting an attack, and next day till one o'clock are in the saddle again. À la guerre comme
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