spoke defiance, and as the day which then was breaking, drew to its close we should know whether its sense of might had been effectually established. And so we returned to town talking upon the strength of the emplacement and upon its strategic value. As we left the gun we were alone, when suddenly, without a sound, the figure of the Colonel was seen coming across the veldt. He passed us quickly, and as we followed him we wondered what he knew, but before noon those who had been informed of the contemplated attack had learned the news. As he had crept up the lines he had passed detached parties of Boers withdrawing from the extreme rear of their position. The explanation was obvious, but he stayed until daybreak to make certain of his ground, and by the light of early dawn the trenches which we were so shortly to fire upon were found deserted. Thus do the spies work within our camp, taking to the enemy news of everything which happened, and thus does the Colonel circumvent them. However, if we did not attack them with our guns, for the remainder of the day the advanced squadrons in the river-bed justified their position by keeping down the crew from the big gun. They poured in volleys at 1,400 yards, and, for the first time in the siege, no shells were thrown. As they retired from their trenches, so they withdrew their gun, and we had a day of peace. But how wearily the time passes; moreover we are still enduring the straits of a siege and the torments of a bombardment. For almost seven weeks we have defied an enemy who encircle us upon every side, and who has summoned to its aid, for the purposes of breaching our trivial earthworks, the finest guns from their arsenal in Pretoria. The Boers outnumber us in men and in artillery, and not a day has passed since the siege began that they have not thrown shrapnel and common shell, omitting minor projectiles, into the town. And still we live, with just sufficient spirit to jeer across our ramparts at the enemy. They Mauser us, and shell us; they cut our water off, and raid our cattle; they make life hell, and they can do so, so long as it may please them; but no one was ever so deluded if they think that by such means Mafeking surrenders. From time to time we have given them a taste of our quality, and if on occasion we have lost some few, it is a source of melancholy satisfaction to know that their loss has been the greater. It is not long since the Boers attempted to blow the town to atoms through the agency of dynamite, though, _similia similibus curantur_, they went to heaven prematurely by an undesirable explosion. It was night, and the town was just about to rest, when it was shaken to its foundations by a most deafening roar; sand and stones, fragments of trees came down as hail from the skies, the whole place being lighted with the lurid glow of blood-red flame. To the north of Mafeking, and so close to the cemetery that it might have