In many ways this month has been the most eventful of any during the siege. Other months of the siege have secured for themselves a certain notoriety, because they have been identified with some particular engagement; but this month of February has seen our labour in the brickfields brought to a successful consummation, and, at a moment when the garrison was congratulating itself upon the triumphant issue of such an adventurous and adventitious undertaking, we have been brought face to face with the contingency that even yet it may not be possible to continue to occupy so advanced a post. If I return to the subject of the brickfields after such a short interval, it is because there, more than anywhere else in Mafeking, the clash of arms is predominant. These many days we have followed out our scheme, endeavouring to circumvent the enemy by pushing forward a line of entrenched posts until they should embrace an area which would enable us to outflank their main lines and enfilade their advanced trenches. There was a moment when this was actually completed, a moment in which we who were in the advanced forts, knew that if we could but hold the position we held the invaders in such a fashion that they would be compelled to abandon their posts. But there was the shadow of uncertainty, since we were rather reckoning upon the hitherto recognised fact, that the Boers belonged to that class of fighting peoples who never purposely attack if they could secure their ends by entrenchments and delay. For one day we rather gloried in the work, until towards dusk we realised with a swift and fearful astonishment that the Boers were intending to sap us. We have supposed it to be by accident rather than by design that a man, in the uniform of some German regiment, appeared of a sudden to arise out of the ground at a point some thirty yards distant from what we had considered to be the end of the Boer trench. His presence explained much, since the night before we had been perplexed at hearing the sound of picking and shovelling a little in advance of our position. At that time we had concluded that the noises emanated from the natives, who were deepening and strengthening the advanced trench of the Boers; but with this figure suddenly appearing, we realised that there was quite a different story to be told, one which implied that our previous opinion of the enemy was in error, and that they intended to make us fight for our position or to turn us out. The situation was rapidly becoming as interesting as any which has developed from the siege. Sap and counter-sap were separated perhaps by eighty yards, and so gallantly and vigorously did the enemy work that we could see them approaching yard by yard. It was impossible for us in the time at our disposal to do very much to stop them; we could simply keep a look-out and drench their trenches with volleys upon the slightest provocation. It was useless to fire upon the natives working in the