in pastry and jam, and ham and eggs, in chops and steaks, in mealies, butter, bread, and pate de foie gras; at liberty to drink, to mix our drinks, to risk “swelled head” and indigestion if we so willed, as we most certainly did.  It was over; we had fought a good fight; and in the conviction that it was worth going through it all for the ineffable delight of the final emergence we sent our hats into the air with an abandon and disregard of the proprieties that was very, very rude.

The Siege was raised! by French—­not Methuen; Codlin was the friend, not Short!  The enthusiasm never slackened, and when late in the afternoon the General with some of his officers visited the Kimberley Club, the climax was reached.  Cheer after cheer rent the air and shook the trees.  The hand-shaking crusade shook the spheres.  Nine o’clock struck; but much we cared; the warning notes had lost their terrors; they startled not the joyous groups crowding the streets, laughing, whistling, singing, crying, dancing, or hilariously toasting French (in the saloons) on Siege soda-water!  Not the least pathetic feature of it all was the length and wryness of our deliverers’ faces when they sought to buy refreshments—­a tin of something—­cup of anything—­and the loud laugh that spake the vacant wares of the gay restaurateur as he brokenly explained the Permit Law with all its “tape” and pomps.  The exodus from the mines was necessarily slow, and midnight had long passed ere the last of the refugees was restored to the glimpses of the moon.

In the meantime our friends the Boers had taken to flight.  Their guns (including Long Tom) had vanished, and Long Cecil kept barking furiously to expedite their departure.  The Boer positions were soon occupied by British troops; large quantities of provisions and forage which had been left behind were duly confiscated; while French’s ordnance was substituted for the guns that had so long intensified the heat of a Kimberley summer.  In town all was bunting and gladness.  The red, white, and blue bedecked the houses, the lamp posts, the tram-cars, the barrel-organs, the monkeys, the dogs, and the horseflesh!  The relief of Kimberley was an accomplished fact.  The issue of the campaign was no longer in doubt.

Little now remains to be told.  There is no need to speak of the rapidity with which railway communication was restored, or of how amid general rejoicings a train steamed into the city and steamed out again choc-a-bloc with passengers in cattle trucks.  Nor need I pity the lot of the postal officials when the sorting of a million letters had begun.  It is not for me to tell of the joy of reading them; to dwell on the Dronfield fight; the evacuation of Magersfontein; the tableau at Paarderberg, of its chastening effects on the “Military Situation.”  Nor may I speculate on how well or wisely we ate and drank when gormandism was again in consonance with law-abiding citizenship.  All these things were after the Siege.