Kimberley, however, was a convenient immediate base between Orange River and Mafeking. Around these two places rumour was spreading a well-woven net of probabilities, intimate yet inherently impossible. War, bloody and fierce, was alternately looming large in the horizon just above their situations, so for the moment I tarried, watching the approach of impending battle from afar off. It was a fine feeling, the constant thrill caused by the mere vividness of martial rumours. They came from Buluwayo in the North, they came from Cape Town in the South, they were brought daily from Bloemfontein; and if they gave infinite zest to the passing hours, it was but the happenings of the hour that they were doomed to be misbelieved. To listen to the gossip and rumours of Headquarters at once became the most serious interest which our life contained just now. Spies are seen everywhere. Within the shade of every shadow there is said to lurk a Boer secret service agent, and, as a consequence, the attitude of the public is one in which each figuratively lays a grimy finger to his nose and breathes blasphemies in whispers to his confiding friend. The spy mania which swept through France but a few weeks ago has appeared here, endowed with magnificent vitality. At Mafeking it has dominated both the military and the public, and, as an illustration, I append the official notice, on page 46, in which many of these gentry are warned from the town by Lord Edward Cecil, Chief Staff Officer to Colonel Baden-Powell. NOTICE. =SPIES= There are in town to-day nine known spies. They are hereby warned to leave before 12 noon to-morrow or they will be apprehended. By order, E. H. CECIL, Major, C.S.O. Mafeking, 7th Oct., 1899. THE NOTICE TO SPIES ISSUED BY COL. BADEN-POWELL. Kimberley has not yet gone so far as this notice, but a similar step is in serious consideration, and the notice will soon be promulgated. What with spies, war scares, reports of Boer invasion, and of active hostilities having commenced, the Western border is living in a seethe of excitement, and appreciating the crisis with but doubtful enjoyment, and many signs of such indisputable terror. Kimberley has called forth its volunteers, who in name are glorious, but in utility uncertain. The Town Guard, after fortifying itself with much Dutch courage, has taken unto itself a weapon of precision of which it knows nothing. Infantry and musketry drill have not existed for the town of diamonds; they are for the Cape Police, for the Mounted Rifles, for Imperial troops; but for those who are regular in their mining, but irregular in their drill, there is none of it. These heroes shake with terror in private, but they gnash their teeth with impotent valour in public; at heart they are rank cowards, for the most part leaving to the few decently spirited the duties of volunteer defence, and to the soldiery and constabulary the rigours of the coming battle.