eath the yellow flag of the
town gaol for their too incautious manifestation; while his wife and young
family were inhabitants of the Women's Laager. And from their subterranean
burrow the Sisters carried on their work of mercy as cheerfully as though
their Order had been originally one of Troglodytes, nursing the sick and
wounded, cooking and washing for the convalescents, comforting the
bereaved, and tending the many orphans of the siege.

South lay the laager of the Refugees. To the westward within the ring of
trenches and about a mile and a half from the town, was the Women's
Laager, visited not seldom by the enemy's shell-fire, in spite of the
Red-Cross Flag. Fever and rheumatism, pneumonia and diphtheria stalked
among the dwellers in these tainted burrows, claiming their human toll.
Women languished and little children pined and withered, dying for lack of
exercise and fresh air, with the free veld spreading away on all sides to
the horizon, and the burning blue South African sky overhead. Famine had
not yet appeared among the Europeans, though grisly black spectres in
Kaffir blankets haunted the refuse-heaps, and fought with gaunt dogs for
picked bones and empty meat-tins, and were found dead not unseldom, after
full meals of strange and dreadful things. Fresh meat was still to be had,
though the cattle and sheep of the Barala had been thinned by raids on the
part of the enemy, and poor grazing. Shell and rifle-fire not infrequently
spared the butcher trouble, so that your joints were sometimes weirdly
shaped. But they were joints, and there was plenty of the preserved
article in Kriel's Warehouse and at the Army Service Stores. Tea and
coffee were becoming rare and precious, the sparkling draught of lager was
to be had only in remembrance; the aromatic beer was all drunk up, and the
stone-ginger was three shillings a bottle. Whisky was to be had at the
price of liquid gold, brandy was treasured above rubies, and served out
sparingly by the Hand of Authority, as medicine in urgent cases.

You could get vegetables from the Chinaman, who continued to cultivate
onions, cabbages, potatoes, and melons in the market-gardens about the
town, imperturbable under shot and shell, his large straw hat affording an
admirable target from the Boer sniper's point of view, as metaphorically
he gathered his fat harvest of dollars from the soil. What you could not
get for any amount of dollars was peace and rest, clean air, and space