The Boers, some said, were growing disheartened for want of food and ammunition, but others found that as the want grew stronger they became emboldened. Success of any serious kind was impossible, but their capacity for annoyance was considerable, and Boer marauding bands continued to raid the neighbourhoods of Cradock, Aliwal North, Ladybrand, causing alarm to the British farmers and also to those Boer ones who were pacifically inclined. The hopes of the guerillas were mainly stayed by the inventive fertility of Mr. Steyn, who stimulated them to the struggle by false accounts of their successes. He assured them also that 5000 Dutchmen had risen in Cape Colony, and that Mr. Kruger had gone to Europe to obtain intervention, and, failing it, meant to sell the Transvaal to the highest bidder. This the sturdy fellows believed, and continued to fight on, not with the valour of despair, but the persistence of anticipation. * * * * * Meanwhile at home, on the 25th of September, Parliament had been dissolved, and a general election had taken place, with the result that Lord Salisbury's Government triumphantly returned to power. Thus the hopes of the Boers--that with a Radical Government might come a repetition of the climb-down policy of '81--were defeated. To vent his disgust, and as a sequel to his letter of a year ago,[15] the correspondent signing himself P. S. sent another highly educational letter to the London journals, a letter which is quoted to serve, as did the former one, to allay the doubt of any who may have questioned the original aggressiveness of the Boers, or doubted the justice of the war sentiment among the British:--