"He spends the rest of the day doing a thousand and one things, receiving reports, adjusting differences, learning from his staff all they know, powwowing with Lord Edward Cecil, his chief staff officer, discovering how much food we have from the D.A.A.G., and suggesting how it may be conserved, and how much per head shall be served out to each soul under his care--all the time with an eye fixed upon Snyman and his horde, reading their thoughts, knowing what they are about to do, and planning a checkmate. In the evening he goes up to the hospital to inquire after his wounded--he never misses this visit--and if a victim of the siege is to be buried it is ten to one that we see him at the graveside. The Colonel trusts his command, but like the good general that he is, leaves nothing to chance, and always has the concentrated knowledge of every officer in his head. Many stories are told by our sentries of one who silently steals out of the blackness of the night and is on them before they have time to challenge. He asks a question or gives a suggestion and a cheery word, and then departs as silently as he came. They even tell of a bearded stranger dressed in grey tweed who has the stature of B.-P., and strolls around the works and makes such remarks as 'Keep a keen eye in that direction; you never know what may be stirring or where they are.' He goes away and they know that he is the commander. Napoleon himself never kept keener vigil than B.-P., or had a greater grasp of what was going on around him. Added to this night-and-day round, our Colonel even directs the other force away up north that he never sees, yet every movement of which he is acquainted with. Nevertheless, the strain, the anxiety that must be there, despite the external show of light-heartedness, the constant watchfulness, and the worries connected with the interior economy of the town, would have soured and broken down and turned grey-headed many another man. But B.-P.'s temperament preserves him, and to-day (April) he is as fresh, as keen, and as full of vigour as when he started in October." Perhaps an even more remarkable testimony than this was that which came from General Pretorius, who, while in hospital, recovering from the wound he received at Elands Laagte, discussed the sieges of Ladysmith, Kimberley, and Mafeking with an English friend.