The oft-recurring scares, necessitating the crowding of, at any rate, the bulk of its inhabitants into the laagers at night, contributed in the main to this. With instances of the fell unsparing ferocity which attended the rebel stroke--sudden, swift, and unexpected--fresh in the mind of everybody, citizens were chary of exposing themselves and their families to a like visitation. Private residences straggling over the surburban stands were abandoned for the greater security of the temporary forts which had been hastily but effectively formed out of some of the principal buildings in and around the township itself; and the comfort and privacy of home-life had perforce to be exchanged for an overcrowded, hotch-potch, barrack sort of existence; men, women, and children of all sorts and sizes herding together, hugger-mugged, under every conceivable form of racket and discomfort, and under the most inadequate conditions of area and convenience. Rumour, in its many-tongued and wildest form, filled the air, gathering in volume, and frequently in wildness, with the advent of every fresh batch of refugees. For from all sides these came flying in--prospectors, miners, outlying settlers with their families, some with a portion of their worldly goods, others with none at all, and fortunate in having escaped with their lives where others had not. For it soon became manifest that such events as the massacre of the Hollingworths and the Inglefields, and the fight and resolute defence at Jekyll's Store, were but samples of what had taken place--or was still going on--all over the country. Haggard fugitives, gaunt with starvation, stony-eyed with days and nights of deadly peril for close companionship, nerves shattered by the most horrible recollections, and apprehension worked up to the acutest phase thereby--continued to arrive, each and all bringing the same tale of treachery and ruthlessness and blood, deepening on every hand the gloom and anxiety of the situation--anxiety on behalf of those not yet accounted for, mingling with an apprehensive looking forward to how it was all going to end, and when. The necessaries of life went up to famine prices, and then the enemy began to invest the town. Southward, crouching lion-like, among the Matyamhlope rocks; on the north, occupying the site of the old Bulawayo kraal, and in possession of the "Government" House which the presumptuous white man had erected upon the former seat of the departed king, overhanging, like a dark cloud, the township beneath, or again making fierce dashes upon traffic which should attempt the eastward way, he mustered in all his savage might--an ever-present menace. But the way to the west, for some unaccountable reason, was left open.