I wended my way to the bedroom through a small office of my husband’s, but when I reached the door I found it would not open, and discovered that part of the roof had fallen in, caused by the bursting of a shell. So I gave up the idea of seeking rest there, and retired to the veranda. I went down the steps and stood outside in the moonlight for a few minutes. It was a lovely night, clear and bright as day! One could scarcely imagine a more peaceful scene. The house had been greatly damaged, but that was not apparent in the moonlight, and the front had escaped the shells which had gone through the roof and burst all round at the back. The roses and heliotrope smelt heavy in the night air, and a cricket or two chirped merrily as usual in the creepers on the walls. I thought of the night before, and of how my husband and I had walked together up and down in the moonlight, talking of what the day was to bring, and how little he had thought of such a terrible ending; and I remembered that poor lad lying wounded in the cellar below now, who only twenty-four hours ago had been the life and soul of the party, singing comic songs with his banjo, and looking forward eagerly to the chances of fighting that might be his when the morning came. I wondered where my husband was, and why they had been away so long. They would be hungry and tired, I thought, and might have waited to arrange matters till the next day, as they had apparently been successful in restoring peace. I had an idea of wandering as far as the gate to see whether the party was visible, but on second thoughts I went back into the veranda, and resolved to wait there until my husband should return. There was one of the officers asleep in a chair close to me, and I was about to follow his example, when Captain Boileau came out, and I went to him and asked him if he would mind going down to the gate and finding out whether he could hear or see anything of the Chief Commissioner’s party, and if he came across any of them to say I wanted my husband. He went off at once, and I fell into a doze in the chair. It was about twelve o’clock at this time. I do not know how long I had been asleep, when I was awaked suddenly by hearing the deafening boom of the big guns again, and knew then that it was not to be peace. For a few seconds I could not stir. Terror seemed to have seized hold of me, and my limbs refused to move; but in a minute I recovered, and ran through the house down to the cellar again, where everyone had become alive to the fact that all was over for us. Where was my husband? What had become of them all? This thought nearly drove me mad with anxiety. I could not imagine what their fate had been, but I knew the anguish of mind my husband would endure when the sound of those terrible guns would tell him that we were being attacked again, as he knew we were almost powerless to make any resistance, through lack of ammunition.