The beginning of the end--Buller's last advance--Heroic Inniskillings--The coming of Dundonald--A welcome at Klip River Drift--A weather-stained horseman--The Natal troopers--Cheers and tears--A grand old General--Sir George White's address--"Thank God, we have kept the flag flying!"--"God save the Queen"--Arrival of Buller--Looking backward--Within four days of starvation--Horseflesh a mere memory--Eight hundred sick and wounded--A word in tribute--Conclusion. The beginning of the end had come on 13th February, when General Buller's army of relief had opened the attack on Hussar Hill. From that day fighting had been fierce and practically continuous, the enemy giving way only after the most stubborn resistance, and taking advantage of every opportunity to make a stand. During that fortnight over 2000 officers and men of General Buller's force paid the price of their dauntless courage; and in all the glorious story no page is brighter than that which puts on undying record the devoted gallantry of the Inniskillings, who were, to all practical intents, wiped out in attacking Pieter's Hill, the last bar across the road to Ladysmith, on the 23rd. Wounded and dying and dead lay out together uncomforted, uncared for throughout the long hours of Saturday until Sunday morning, when a truce was agreed to. Still the hill was not won, and was to be held by the enemy until the 27th, the nineteenth anniversary of Majuba, a day no longer to be held in shameful memory. On the following day the Boers were in full retreat; and Lord Dundonald, with a small body of mounted troops, made a dash across the hills to Ladysmith. Their coming was hailed by the long-isolated town with the wildest outbursts of delight. Its effect is graphically suggested by Mr. Pearse in a number of jottings in his diary on the same night:-- As night closes in there are cheers rolling towards us from the plain beyond Klip River, where our volunteers are on patrol. Ladysmith, so quiet and undemonstrative in its patient endurance of a long siege, goes wild at the sound. Everybody divines its meaning. Our friends from the victorious army of the south are coming! All the town rushes out to meet them, where they must cross a drift. The voices of strong men break into childish treble as they try to cheer, women laugh and cry by turns, and all crowd about the troopers of Lord Dundonald's escort, giving them such a welcome as few victors from the battlefield have ever known. The hour of our deliverance has come. After a hundred and twenty-two days of bombardment--a hundred and nineteen of close investment--the Siege of Ladysmith is at an end. What a hero our gallant old General is to all of us, when he rides forward to greet Lord Dundonald, and how voices tremble with deep thankfulness while we sing "God Save the Queen"!