We have done our best to endure shells, privations, and the approach of a sickly season with fortitude if not absolute cheerfulness, and our hope is that though the position here may not seem a very glorious one, it will be recognised henceforth as an example of the way in which British soldiers and colonists of British descent can bear themselves in circumstances that try the best qualities of men and women. "I wonder what they think of us in England now? Do they regard us as heroes or damned fools for stopping here?" asked an officer of the King's Royal Rifles with comic seriousness. This question was transmitted in a slightly varied form by heliograph signal to our comrades south of the Tugela one day, and the answering flashes came back, "You are heroes; not----" Here the message was interrupted by clouds, and lost in a series of confused dashes which the receiving signaller could not read. We flatter ourselves, however, that the missing words were full of generous appreciation. There is little enough reaching us from the outer world calculated to "buck up" troops who feel the ignominy of having a passively defensive role thrust upon them for "strategic reasons," cribbed, cabined, and confined within a ring of hills by forces believed to be inferior to their own, and exposed daily to shell fire, which, if not so destructive as our enemies intend it to be, brings a possible tragedy with every fragment of the thousands that fall about us. Counting eight hundred bullets and jagged bits of iron within the bursting area of one shrapnel shell from Bulwaan, a civilian expressed wonder that anybody should be left alive in Ladysmith after forty days of bombardment. Since then the shelling has been even hotter and more destructive; but, fortunately, Boer guns do not fire many shrapnel, nor do the shells burst always in places where they can do most damage. Many portions of the camp unprotected by works in any shape cannot be seen from the enemy's batteries, and though often searched for by shells thrown at haphazard, our Cavalry, Artillery, and Army Service lines have frequently escaped being hit by a good fortune that seems almost miraculous. One day three successive shells fell and burst between the guns of a battery, but the artillerymen, standing by their harnessed horses, did not move or seem to take any notice of the vicious visitors. Such is the etiquette of a service which, while firmly believing in the efficacy of its own fire, is trained to ignore that of an enemy's guns. Nevertheless gunners, like less stoical mortals, appreciate the value of bomb-proof shelters when shells are flying about; and experience, during this siege of Ladysmith, should have taught us all the dangers of carelessness when by timely discretion many calamities might have been averted.