Thursday was uneventful. The _quasi_-official statement relative to the relief of Mafeking was contradicted. The peculiarity of the proceeding--of contradicting an _agreeable_ canard--not the contradiction itself--occasioned surprise; it was so unusual. Some people attributed it to a desire on the Colonel's part cheaply to vindicate Official veracity in all things--not injurious to the "Military Situation!" All our little troubles and kicks against the pricks had to be subordinated to the "Military Situation." The quality of the very horse we ate was due to the "Military Situation." The local situation, with its alarming death roll, was a trifle light as air beside the other. Had the Colonel in his wisdom seen anything in its suppression advantageous to the "Military Situation," the truth anent Mafeking would hardly have seen the light. The "Military Situation" was sacrosanct, supreme, inviolable! It was a fetish, a sort of idol that the "Law" commanded all creeds and classes to worship. In the afternoon an occasional shell was jerked into the town. Kenilworth was loudly barked at for an hour; and the correspondent of the _London Times_, while driving in the suburb, narrowly escaped being bitten. But no cattle were hit; that was the pity of it. We could have forgiven the Boers much had they only killed the oxen, and provided us with something rational to eat, in spite of the Colonel and his horses. Friday was all excitement; we had a glimpse of the balloon again, waltzing at a high altitude in the heavens, the Column's artillery the while maintaining a continuous uproar. Soon a terrific report was heard, which was presumed to have been caused by the explosion of a Boer magazine. A lyddite missile had done the deed; no "common" shell, we argued, could have created such a noise. After an hour the balloon disappeared, and we were of the earth earthly once more. Late in the evening some harmless shells dropped into the streets, and a second catastrophe befel a Boer magazine. Saturday again. Lord Methuen proclaimed it through the throat of his cannon. Long Cecil--pretending to deduce from their silence that the Boers imagined it to be Sunday--was most profuse in the distribution of "compliments." But no acknowledgment came back, no error was admitted, and the day dragged itself to an end, leaving little in its train to turn one's thoughts from gloomy retrospection.