And now for sheer personalities. Mr. Stuart had arrived, and as I considered he was much better qualified to represent the paper with the force than myself, I determined to come south. Mr. B. Weil, whom as I have previously said, I consider to be one of the principal factors in the successful defence, certainly as regards the food supply, said he was going south. I accordingly resolved to accompany him, and while returning from the ceremony suggested it. Anyhow, to make a long story short, I arrived as he was starting, and with a small bag, having relinquished all my Mafeking impedimenta, climbed into his cart. He had to turn out one of his boys, but I didn’t mind that, and being the most good-natured of men, he tried to look as if he didn’t. So our caravan started--Major Anderson, Major Davis (Surg. I.L.I.), Mr. Weil, and myself, together with his servant Mitchell, a prototype of "Binjamin," but absolutely reliable and hard-working, also Bradley, of Bradley’s Hotel, Inspector Marsh, the Rev. ---- Peart, and Ronny Moncrieffe (who had secured a horse belonging to a Protectorate regiment, and proposed to accompany us). He had done a lot of good work in the siege, and was about as tired and unfit as a man could be. However, he was determined to get through, and so he did. It was a quaint pilgrimage, as the column, though it had swept the country, had not particularly cleared it, and the Boer is here to-day, gone to-morrow, and back the next day. Well, our commissariat was excellent. I contributed some eight biscuits and three tins of bully, and that is all I have done except live on the fat of the land--Lord, how fat it seemed after Mafeking--a land flowing with fresh milk, butter and eggs, mutton and white bread, and above all, the sense of freedom, I never knew what it felt like to be properly free before, and I have been more or less of a wanderer most of my life. No more sieges for me, except perhaps from the outside. Yet I was sorry to leave Mafeking, and I may truly say as far as I know I didn’t leave a bad friend behind me, only all my kit. Towards dark, after an outspan that was like a picnic, we reached Mr. Wright’s farm, where the wounded were--one had died the night before--and we found Mr. Hands, _Daily Mail_, badly wounded in the thigh, but doing well; Captain Maxwell, I.S.C., and others. Mr. Wright acts up to his name. Two of his sons were in "tronk" at Zeerust for refusing to join the Boers, and what he had was at our disposal. I wonder if people at home realize in what a position our loyalists in Bechuanaland have been placed. If they didn’t come in their own countrymen regarded them as rebels,--if they did they lost all they had. But by doing as they have done, that is by carrying on their business while exposed to all the contumely and insult the Boers could heap on them, with the possible loss of life as well as property, they have served their country as well as those who have taken