held, the latter having fallen a little farther back.  As the sun set came a helio-message:  “Diamond Fields Horse.—­All well.  Good-night.”  We went to dinner at seven, and just as we were sitting down I heard some feeble cheers.  Thinking something must have happened, I ran to the market-square, and, seeing a dusty khaki-clad figure whose appearance was unfamiliar to me, I touched him on the shoulder, and said:  “Has anyone come in?” “We have come in,” he answered—­“Major Karri-Davis and eight men of the Imperial Light Horse.”  Then I saw that officer himself, and he told us that, profiting by an hour’s dusk, they had ridden straight in before the moon rose, and that they were now sending back two troopers to tell the column the way was clear.  Their having thus pushed on at once was a lucky inspiration, for, had they waited for daylight, they would probably have had a hard fight, even if they had got in at all.  This plucky column of 1,100 men had marched nearly 300 miles in twelve days, absolutely confounding the Boers by their rapidity.

We heard weeks afterwards how that same day of the relief of Mafeking was celebrated in London with jubilation past belief, everyone going mad with delight.  The original event in the town itself was a very tame if impressive affair—­merely a score or so of people, singing “Rule, Britannia,” surrounding eight or nine dust-begrimed figures, each holding a tired and jaded horse, and a few women on the outskirts of the circle with tears of joy in their eyes.  Needless to say, no one thought of sleep that night.  At 3.30 a.m. someone came and fetched me in a pony-cart, and we drove out to the polo-ground, where, by brilliant moonlight, we saw the column come into camp.  Strings and strings of waggons were soon drawn up; next to them black masses, which were the guns; and beyond these, men, lying down anywhere, dead-tired, beside their horses.  The rest of the night I spent at the hospital, where they were bringing in those wounded in the action of the previous afternoon.  At eight o’clock we were having breakfast with Colonel Mahon, Prince Alexander of Teck, Sir John Willoughby, and Colonel Frank Rhodes, as additional guests.  We had not seen a strange face for eight months, and could do nothing but stare at them, and I think each one of us felt as if he or she were in a dream.  Our friends told of their wonderful march, and how they had encamped one night at Setlagoli, where they had been taken care of by Mrs. Fraser and Metelka, who had spent the night in cooking for the officers, which fact had specially delighted Colonel Rhodes, who told me my maid was a “charming creature.”  But this pleasant conversation was interrupted by a message, saying that, as the Boer laagers were as intact as yesterday, the artillery were going to bombard them at once.  Those of us who had leisure repaired at once to the convent, and from there the sight that followed was worth waiting all these many months to see.  First