on the spot for five pounds each, with the certainty of being able to sell them again if they cared to at an enormous profit some day.  After wasting some ammunition for the sake of this practical joke, our enemies began a bombardment in earnest.  Most of this was directed at the defenceless town.  One shell burst in a private house, wounding slightly the owner, Mrs. Kennedy, whose escape from fatal injuries seemed miraculous, for the room in which she stood at that moment was completely wrecked, the windows blown out, and furniture reduced to a heap of shapeless ruin.

Shells notwithstanding, the troops had their Christmas sports following a substantial dinner of roast beef and plum-pudding.  There were high jinks in the volunteer camps, where Imperial Light Horse, Natal Carbineers, and Border Mounted Rifles, representing the thews and sinews of Colonial manhood, vied with Regular regiments in strenuous tugs of war and other athletic exercises, preparatory to the tournament, which is fixed for New Year’s Day—­“weather and the enemy’s guns permitting.”  Three special correspondents, whose waggons are outspanned to form a pleasant little camp in the slightly hollowed ridge of a central hill, where they cannot be seen from the Boer batteries, and are therefore comparatively safe except from stray shells, organised a series of novel sports for the benefit of their nearest neighbours—­the Rifle Brigade transport “South Africa,” in the person of its genial representative, put up most of the prize-money, and together we arranged a succession of events, offering inducements enough to secure full entries for competitions that lasted from ten o’clock in the morning until near sunset, allowing sufficient intervals for the mid-day meal and other refreshments.  We flatter ourselves that our gymkhana, in which races ridden on pack and transport mules furnished the liveliest incidents, would take a lot of beating—­as a humorous entertainment at any rate.  In order to avoid drawing fire from “Puffing Billy” or “Silent Sue” of Bulwaan, the course had to be laid in a semicircle that passed the picketing line for mules.  Up to that point they would gallop like thoroughbreds, then cut it to their customary feeding-places with a promptness that sent several good riders to ground as if they had been shot.  There are several good jockeys in the Rifle Brigade transport, and among them one who spent many days in racing stables at home and abroad before he took it into his head to follow the fifes and drums of “Ninety-Five.”  But even the redoubtable “Ginger,” with all his horseman’s skill and powers of persuasion in French, Hindustani, and English, could not prevail over a mule’s will.  It was more by luck than good riding that anybody managed to get past the post without two or three falls by the way.  But this only added to the fun of the thing, for Tommy when in sportive mood takes hard knocks with infinite good-humour.  When at the finish successful and unsuccessful competitors assembled to cheer their hosts, the three correspondents had the gratification of feeling that for a few of the many besieged soldiers in Ladysmith they had helped to make Christmas merry.