They heard the news about Ladysmith, and all about the British disasters. But they also heard that, instead of sixty thousand men being sent out to help them, England was packing off two hundred thousand of her best soldiers, and ready to send at the back of that six or eight hundred thousand, if wanted, to clear the board. That assurance braced them up. The Lion and his cubs were in earnest now, and the inflated rebels were doomed. The Boer had thrown off the mask too completely ever to be trusted with a rifle again. He must be disarmed and kept so until he was civilised. The master villains, Paul Kruger and his weak-minded catspaw, Steyn, would be arraigned for their crimes against civilisation and quashed. This Cronje, the vile and brutal murderer, would yet be tried for his atrocities, and punished as he deserved. Schreiner and his brother traitors would have to give account of their stewardship and be properly rewarded, and the land would be free for honest colonists to cultivate. Not a man in this beleaguered garrison but rested assured that those Irish Nationalists, those paid Boer agents and home-bred renegades, as well as the treacherous Cape Afrikanders, would yet get the just reward of their atrocious treason; and this braced them up to endure half and quarter rations, and to stand to their guns while famine, fever, and shells thinned their ranks day after day. They trusted in their country to do her duty when the hour of retribution arrived, and to punish those dastards who used explosive bullets, fired on hospitals and the women's quarters; who used the sacred white flag for murder, wantonly slaughtered the wounded and their benefactors in spite of the red cross flag; who ravenously destroyed and looted farms, and did in a hundred ways what savages would have been ashamed of. They trusted that all these dastardly actions would be sifted and punished, in individuals as well as in masses, therefore they kept up their spirits and held to their posts without a thought of surrender. Let England remember the lacerations and wounds of her brave and dauntless sons when the hour comes for dealing with this most unworthy and despicable foe. They have fought well, but so do many of the most atrocious murderers, pirates, and bushrangers, when driven into a corner, yet all the same the pirates are hanged when caught. A rat, a snake, or a scorpion will also face up under such circumstances, yet these vermin are crushed all the same. Desperation and brute viciousness is not heroism, any more than tolerated treason is a token of nobility. Ned Romer and his comrades did their part like brave men during this prolonged siege. It was a magnificent education to them as sons of the Empire. Fortunately they escaped so far woundless, and also kept off the sick-list; yet during those four and a half months they had plenty to do, and, like the rest of the defenders, had little time to rest.