Yet the effect of them remained. As a consequence of the close confinement of some 20,000 persons, disease was stalking abroad, even attacking those who but an hour ago had neared the place. Away at Intombi camp, too, where drugs were scarce, many of the patients--convalescent patients--were sinking for want of the sustaining food which was necessary to recovery. There was regret, poignant and newly awakened, in this moment of relief, regret standing dry-eyed, yet with a grievous ache at the heart--regret that before had learnt to bear and be still. It was impossible to see the glad side without also remembering the deeply pathetic one. The pestiferous atmosphere breathed of fever and disease, and those coming into it realised only too well what havoc such an atmosphere must have played on the sickly and the starved. Besides this there were gaps--woeful gaps. Names that dared not be mentioned, spots that could scarce be looked upon with dry eyes. The bronzed warriors, who day after day had shown tough fronts to the enemy, and whose ceaseless struggles should have hardened them to emotion, now turned aside to conceal the agony of bleeding hearts. Outside the town, in a sheltered hollow below Waggon Hill, was a pathetic garden of sleep. Here, under the shadow of cypress trees, lay the honoured remains of brave fellows who had given themselves to save the town, and with the town the prestige of their motherland. The earth barely covered them, but for all that their peace was perfect. They had struggled to save Natal, and Natal through them and the survivors was saved. If there is a loophole whence those who have passed on to the Invisible can peer down and observe the issues of mortal deeds, surely in that great hour, those splendid, those self-abnegating ones, who had given their heart's blood for the glory of the Empire, must then have gazed their fill, and in the general rejoicing have reaped their beatific reward. * * * * * The effect in England of the news of the relief was truly surprising. The spectacle was unique in the annals of Victoria's reign. On Thursday the 1st of March the whole City of London by one consent burst into jubilation. Every human being, however hard-worked, wore a smile; every heart, however sore, throbbed with a sense of reflected triumph; for all, if they had not been at the front in the flesh, had been there in the spirit these many, many days. Never was such a spontaneous outburst of rejoicing! A nation of shopkeepers indeed! Why, shopkeeping and work of all kinds were forgotten, and in front of the Mansion House crowded the delighted multitudes, oblivious of everything save the glorious fact that British bull-dog tenacity had withstood the most fiendish warfare, and wiles, and wickedness that vengeful Dutchmen could invent.