think that no one except a shipwrecked mariner, cast away on a desert island, and suddenly perceiving a friendly sail, could have followed our feelings of delight on that occasion.  We walked about thinking we must be dreaming, and finding it difficult to believe that we were in such close contact with home and friends.  In less than ten minutes posters were out, and eager groups were busy at the street-corners, discussing the news, scrappy indeed, and terribly deficient in all details, but how welcome, after all the vague native rumours we had had to distract us during the past weeks!  We were content then to wait any length of time, and our lives varied very little as the weeks slipped by.  The bombardment was resumed with vigour, and the old monster gun cruised right round the town and boomed destruction at us from no less than five different points of vantage.  When the shelling was very heavy, we used to say to ourselves, “What a good thing they are using up their ammunition!” when again for a few days it was slack, we were convinced our foes had had bad news.  What matter if our next information was that the Boers had been seen throwing up their hats and giving vent to other visible expressions of delight:  we had passed a few peaceful hours.

Many casualties continued to take place; some were fatal and tragic, but many and providential were the escapes recorded.  Among the former, one poor man was blown to bits while sitting eating his breakfast; but the same day, when a shell landed in or near a house adjacent to my bomb-proof, it merely took a cage containing a canary with it through the window, while another fragment went into a dwelling across the street, and made mince-meat of a sewing-machine and a new dress on which a young lady had been busily engaged.  She had risen from her pleasant occupation but three minutes before.  The coolness of the inhabitants, of both sexes, was a source of constant surprise and admiration to me, and women must always be proud to think that the wives and daughters of the garrison were just as conspicuous by their pluck as the defenders themselves.  Often of a hot afternoon, when I was sitting in my bomb-proof, from inclination as well as from prudence—­for it was a far cooler resort than the stuffy iron-roofed houses—­while women and children were walking about quite unconcernedly outside, I used to hear the warning bell ring, followed by so much scuffling, screaming, and giggling, in which were mingled jokes and loud laughter from the men, that it made me smile as I listened; then, after the explosion, they would emerge from any improvised shelter and go gaily on their way, and the clang of the blacksmith’s anvil, close at hand, would be resumed almost before the noise had ceased and the dust had subsided.  One day a lady was wheeling her two babies in a mail-cart up and down the wide road, while the Boers were busily shelling a distant part of the defences.  The children clapped their hands when they heard the peculiar siren and whistle