It seemed but artistic that Lord Dundonald and his brave irregulars should have met the keen edge of joyous welcome, that the burst of enthusiasm which greeted them should have been the heartiest of which Ladysmith, after a siege of 118 days, was capable. It was right, almost beautiful, that the staunch Colonials, who so well had fought for the Empire, should be the ones to throw open the doors of the dolorous prison, and deliver those who had been not only victims to the devilish machinations of the Boer, but had suffered from the active ache of suspense and the passive one of starvation, from their hellish bondage. Their informal coming was part and parcel of the unrehearsed and the splendid that appeared at every corner in this absolutely incomprehensible war. [Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL THE EARL OF DUNDONALD, C.B. Photo by R. Faulkner & Co.] The next day things were more decorously done--more English in their reserve. Etiquette and custom resumed their sway, and General Sir Archibald Hunter straightened out the limp backbone of the army, and made soldierly preparations to welcome the relief column. There were cleansings and polishings, washings and brushings up, of a ramshackle kind, it is true, but they savoured of the old parade days returned. Poor skeletons of horses were groomed down, Sunday best was smoothed out, everything was done that the slender resources of the melancholy perimeter would allow. Shortly after noon on the 3rd of March Sir Redvers Buller made his formal entry. His arrival was somewhat unexpected, and there was little effervescent demonstration. Sir George White and Sir Redvers Buller meeting with a handclasp, said at first little more than the familiar "D'ye do?" of saunterers in Piccadilly. What else could be done? There was much to say, so much that must remain ever unsaid, and throats to-day were too tightly compressed in strangling the large and unspeakable emotion to give vent to the infinitesimal resource of speech. Meanwhile the forlorn streets had begun to fill. They were margined by the garrison, and with them were collected such of the sorry civilians as were able to stand exposed to the tropical glare of the sun in its zenith. They came out wondering, almost diffident. Was it possible that the morning message of melenite was no longer to be heard? that the hoarse cadence of hostile artillery was silent for good? Was the open distance really innocuous--clear and peaceful as a Swiss landscape? They scarcely recognised themselves or their surroundings, and looked dazedly to right and left as on a changed world. Sir George White, with his staff, now took up a position in front of the Town Hall, where, backgrounded by the ruined tower--it had been battered, as it were, by the whole armoury of Satan--the broken blue tin houses and the parched trees, the group made an appropriate picture of noble wreck--of aristocratical exhaustion. The relievers, though