To-night we buried him.  The coffin was not ready till half-past eleven.  All the London correspondents came, and a few officers, Colonel Stoneman (A.S.C.) and Major Henderson, of the Intelligence Department, representing the Staff.  Many more would have come, but nearly the whole garrison was warned for duty.  About twenty-five of us, all mounted, followed the little glass hearse with its black and white embellishments.  The few soldiers and sentries whom we passed halted and gave the last salute.  There was a full moon, covered with clouds, that let the light through at their misty edges.  A soft rain fell as we lowered the coffin by thin ropes into the grave.  The Boer searchlight on Bulwan was sweeping the half circle of the English defences from end to end, and now and then it opened its full white eye upon us, as though the enemy wondered what we were doing there.  We were laying to rest a man of assured, though unaccomplished genius, whose heart had still been full of hopes and generosity.  One who had not lost the affections and charm of youth, nor been dulled either by success or disappointment.

    “From the contagion of the world’s slow stain
      He is secure; and now can never mourn
    A heart grown old, a head grown grey, in vain—­
      Nor when the spirit’s self has ceased to burn
    With sparkless ashes load an unlamented urn.”

     January 16, 1900.

A day of unfulfilled expectation, unrelieved even by lies and rumours.  From the top of Observation Hill I again watched the Dutch in their clustered camps, fourteen miles away across the great plain, whilst our heliograph flashed to us from the dark hill beyond them.  But there was no sound of the expected guns, and every one lost heart a little.

At the market, eggs were a guinea a dozen.  Four pounds of oatmeal sold for 11s. 6d.  A four-ounce tin of English tobacco fetched 30s.  Out of our original numbers of about 12,000 nearly 3,000 are now sick or wounded at Intombi, and there are over 200 graves there.  More helpers are wanted, and to-day Colonel Stoneman summoned 150 loafers from their holes in the river-bank, and called for twenty volunteers.  No one came, so he has stopped their rations till they can agree among themselves to produce the twenty ready to start.

     January 17, 1900.

The far-off mutter of Buller’s guns began at half-past five a.m., and lasted nearly all day.  From King’s Post I watched the stretch of plain—­Six Mile Flats, the official map calls it—­leading away to Potgieter’s Drift, where his troops are probably crossing.  I could see three of the little Dutch camps, and here and there bodies of Boers moving over the country.  Suddenly in the midst of the plain, just our side of the camp near “Wesse’s Plantation,” a great cloud of smoke and dust arose, and slowly drifted away.  Beyond doubt, it was the bursting of a British shell.  Aimed at the camp it overshot the mark, and landed on the