For some time the ears of London had been pricked up in anxious expectation. Lord Roberts had promised to relieve Mafeking by the 18th of May, and the Field-Marshal was known to be punctuality personified. All the town remained in a state of suppressed excitement, little flags were selling like wildfire, and big flags were being got into readiness for the great, the longed-for word. Early in the morning of the 17th the papers were anxiously perused, and man asked man if any news had leaked out. The 18th arrived. Nothing was known. The War Office maintained its adamantine calm. The day grew middle-aged, almost old--then, as the shutters were about to go up (twenty minutes past nine was the exact hour), one telegram of Reuter's fired the fuse, and London, followed presently by the whole British Empire, was ablaze with excitement. The flame, like most flames, broke out almost unnoticed. Some one on a cycle--some one in a cab, heard the glorious three words, and sped breathless to carry the contagion of his rapture far and wide. Street after street began to smoulder--to glow; and, presto! the town was one vast conflagration! Such a furnace of patriotism had never been seen within the confines of the staid metropolis. By ten o'clock the populace of one consent had run wild into the streets--the houses were too cramped to hold them--they ran wild, roaring and yelling and shouting and singing, passing into the heart of the Capital in dense armies--passing? nay!--for soon none could pass, but had merely to be propelled good-humouredly by the compact mass that surged apparently to no destination whatever. Whence came the clamouring hosts it was impossible to say--they seemed to rise from the earth, so rapidly, so mysteriously, did their numbers increase. Liberty, equality, fraternity, was the motto of this memorable night. All ages, and ranks, and sexes were linked together in the bonds of sympathetic patriotism--countess or coster, duke or drayman, it was all one--an identical beam of triumph imparted a relationship to every British face. Minutes had scarcely grown into hours before the Union Jack fluttered from every window, from every cart and 'bus, from every hand, and the roar of human joy was as the roar of the ocean in a tempest. At the theatres, as at the railway stations, the crowds heard and wondered only for a moment, for the electrical news got into their midst, and they on the instant took up the cry and the cheer, and repeated them with all their might. Indeed, theatrical performances were suspended while the joyous audiences sang and re-sang "Rule, Britannia" and "God Save the Queen," and then, unsatisfied, tore into the open to let off steam as it were, and view a sight which never before has been witnessed, and probably never again will be visible in the precincts of London Town. The Mansion House, where the display of the message had caused a huge concourse to assemble, was next besieged, and the old walls literally shook with the