They did something to encourage this hope yesterday. It began with a heavy artillery duel between "Long Tom" and the naval gun that is known as "Lady Anne." After vain attempts to silence our battery, the enemy's fire, generally so accurate, became wild, several shells going so high that they struck the convent hospital hundreds of yards in rear. This, at any rate, is the most charitable explanation of acts that would otherwise be inexcusable. The Red Cross was at that time, and for days before, flying above the convent, in which Colonel Dick-Cunyngham and Major Riddell were patients, under the care of nursing sisters. Fortunately, good shelter was found for them in the convent cellars until they could be removed to safer quarters, but before this much of the upper rooms had been reduced to ruins by persistent shelling. When the Boers thought they had sufficiently demoralised our defensive forces by artillery "preparation," a brisk attack by riflemen began to develop against Maiden's Castle, Caesar's Camp, and Waggon Hill, a continuous range forming the southern key to our position, and held by the Manchester Regiment. Brigadier-General Hamilton and his staff were there from the outset, ready, if need be, to call up the Gordons in support. This necessity, however, never arose, though the attack, as I can testify from personal observation on the spot, was pushed for some time with great persistence, the Boers trying again and again to creep up by the western slopes of Waggon Hill, while shells raked the whole face of Caesar's Camp to Maiden's Castle, and burst repeatedly among the tents of the Manchester battalion, without doing serious harm. A colour-sergeant with only fourteen men defended the crest of Waggon Hill until nightfall, when the Boers retired sullenly. To repeated offers of reinforcements the sergeant warmly replied that he had men enough for the job, and proved it by repelling every attack, the Boers declining to face the steady fire that was poured upon them whenever they showed themselves. Colonel Hamilton, however, had a firm conviction that the Boer movement against that flank was only a feeler for more determined enterprises to follow, and he accordingly stiffened the defensive lines there by mounting half a field battery in strong earthworks during the night, and sending up bodies of mounted infantry to support the Manchesters.