I have been privileged to see certain letters written to his wife by the friend with whom he shared his Ladysmith house during the course of his illness.  “How he contracted enteric fever,” says Mr Maud, “I cannot tell.  It is unfortunately very prevalent in the camp just now.  He began to be ill on the 13th of December, but on that day the doctor was not quite sure about its being enteric, although he at once commenced with the treatment for that disease.  The following day there was no doubt about it, and we moved him from our noisy and uncomfortable quarters in the Imperial Light Horse Camp to our present abode, which is quite the best house in Ladysmith.  Major Henderson of the Intelligence Department very kindly offered his own room, a fine, airy, and well-furnished apartment, although he was barely recovered of his wound.  At first I could only procure the services of a trained orderly of the 5th Dragoon Guards lent to us by the colonel, but a few days later we were lucky enough to find a lady nurse, who has turned out most excellently, and she takes charge at night....  I am happy to tell you that everything has gone on splendidly"....  After describing how the fever gradually approached a crisis, Mr Maud continues:  “When he was at his worst he was often delirious, but never violent; the only trouble was to prevent him getting out of bed.  He was continually asking us to go and fetch you, and always thought he was journeying homewards.  It never does to halloa before one gets out of the wood, but I do really think that he is well on the road to recovery.”  Alas!

Not so much as a continued record of Steevens’s illness, as in the nature of a pathetic side-issue to the tragedy of his death, I subjoin one or two passages from a letter sent subsequently from Ladysmith by the same faithful friend before the end:  “He has withstood the storm wonderfully well, and he is not very much pulled down.  The doctor thinks that he should be about again in a fortnight”—­the letter was written on the 4th of January—­“by which time I trust General Buller will have arrived and reopened the railway.  Directly it is possible to move, I shall take him down to Nottingham Road....  There has been little or nothing to do for the last month beyond listening to the bursting of the Long Tom shells.”  That touch about General Buller’s arrival is surely one of the most strangely appealing incidents in the recent history of human confidence and human expectation!  Another friend, Mr George Lynch, whose name occurred in one of his letters in a passage curiously characteristic of Steevens’s drily incisive humour, writes about the days that must immediately have preceded his illness:  “He was as fit and well as possible when I left Ladysmith last month.” (The letter is dated from Durban, January 11.) “We were drawing rations like the soldiers, but had some ’74 port and a plum-pudding which we were keeping for Christmas Day....  Shells fell in our vicinity more or less like angels’ visits, and I had a bet with him of a dinner.  I backed our house to be hit against another which he selected; and he won.  I am to pay the dinner at the Savoy when we return.”