evening the enemy’s gun on Rifleman’s Ridge, or Lancer’s Nek, opened straight over the general’s new quarters, to which Sir George White had only changed half an hour earlier.  This may be merely a coincidence, but it is strange that no shells have fallen near his house at the foot of Port Road since he quitted it.  Artillery could be heard southward at intervals pounding away with dull thuds like the beats of time on a big drum muffled.  But we have almost ceased to speculate on the meaning of such sounds—­while they come no nearer this way there is no message of relief to us in them, and we are getting reconciled to the idea of waiting, irksome though it may be and heavy with many unpleasant possibilities.

Ladysmith had now been for fifty days under the fire of the enemy’s guns.  The situation after Sir Redvers Buller’s first failure to relieve the town, as has been seen, grew more serious, and although it was very far indeed from what could be regarded as critical, there is to be remarked in telegrams and letters of this period a growing appreciation of its irksomeness.  But dark as the sky looked it was flecked by many a brighter patch.  There was a gay as well as a grave side to life in the besieged town, and to both Mr. Pearse does justice in a letter written on 21st December under the heading, “Amenities of a Siege.”  It is as follows:—­

We have done our best to endure shells, privations, and the approach of a sickly season with fortitude if not absolute cheerfulness, and our hope is that though the position here may not seem a very glorious one, it will be recognised henceforth as an example of the way in which British soldiers and colonists of British descent can bear themselves in circumstances that try the best qualities of men and women.

“I wonder what they think of us in England now?  Do they regard us as heroes or damned fools for stopping here?” asked an officer of the King’s Royal Rifles with comic seriousness.  This question was transmitted in a slightly varied form by heliograph signal to our comrades south of the Tugela one day, and the answering flashes came back, “You are heroes; not——­” Here the message was interrupted by clouds, and lost in a series of confused dashes which the receiving signaller could not read.  We flatter ourselves, however, that the missing words were full of generous appreciation.

There is little enough reaching us from the outer world calculated to “buck up” troops who feel the ignominy of having a passively defensive role thrust upon them for “strategic reasons,” cribbed, cabined, and confined within a ring of hills by forces believed to be inferior to their own, and exposed daily to shell fire, which, if not so destructive as our enemies intend it to be, brings a possible tragedy with every fragment of the thousands that fall about us.  Counting eight hundred bullets and jagged bits of iron within the bursting area of one shrapnel shell from Bulwaan, a civilian expressed wonder that