The imprimatur has now been given to the siege, and that chapter of the war which bears reference to the investment of Mafeking must now be considered as closed. The end of the drama is with us; the curtain has dropped, and the people of the play are scattering--some are dead, some have been wounded, lying nigh to death in the Victoria Hospital, some have passed through this seven months' ordeal suffering neither monetary loss nor physical hurt, but bearing with them, in their minds, the almost indelible impress of an interesting but terrible experience. And so the play is ended, and the great historical drama in which we have enacted our part is soon to present fresh scenes, and with the transformation, let us hope some stirring incident and a picturesque scenario. To the end, of course, there is the story, but it is simple of fact, it is plain of feature, it deals only with what one may consider as the final obsequies of the siege, and in a brief space we will consider them. The siege is now officially returned as having been raised by General Mahon's force at half-past ten upon the morning of May 17th. It has been quiet since then. The garrison has mainly rested, taking itself idly and participating in the few last deft touches with which Colonel Baden-Powell has adorned the siege. These issues to the relief have been sad, have been pleasing, but mournful or gay they have served their purpose, fitting in most accurately with the long chain of circumstances which has enclosed the siege. There was the time when the garrison attended just beyond the precincts of the cemetery, where the rank and file of the forces which have been beleaguered, stood to attention as they paid their last honour to the dead, to all of those who died so nobly, to those who had been the victims of disease, and who, one and all, had paid the penalty of our success. It was a mournful retrospect which was thus forced upon our notice as the names of our dead were passed slowly in review; but as the mournful cadences dropped from the lips of the preacher we braced ourselves to think that such an end, as we had gathered to conclude, was but the inevitable. As the Colonel stood before us--the man who reaped the glory of the siege--we wondered whether beneath the calmness of his demeanour there lurked any feeling of regret, any half-cherished desire to express aloud to those who stood around him the potency of his sorrows. To him it was but the simple ceremony, and one, moreover, to be got through quickly, and indeed there was but little in the service. Occasionally the breeze, which sighed so tremulously through the hedge of trees that fringe the graveyard, wafted to us snatches of prayer. And that was all, so far as we were concerned--the mere fragments of a passing communion, ending as abruptly as it began, seeming all to concentrate in that one moment when at command three rounds of blank cartridge were fired across the graves. That was the