en. The military authorities had commandeered all
eatables, arranging that bread and meat should be sold at prices fixed
for all. The health of the troops was kept up by athletic exercises, and
the officers at times played polo. The bars at the hotels were closed,
but mineral waters were obtainable. Horses began to look lean, though
oats and mealies, bran and hay were forthcoming in sufficient quantity;
but of pasturage there was little. The Boers made great efforts to shoot
the cattle, thinking that though they might not storm the garrison they
might starve it to surrender. Very few newspapers were smuggled into
the town, and these were rapturously seized and devoured. Life was
monotonous and a little sickness began to be apparent, many of the cases
arising from using the muddy water of the river.

It was now discovered that the fashionable entertainment of the Dutch
ladies was to take special weekly trains from Pretoria for the purpose
of joining the Boers on the hills outside Ladysmith and inspecting the
unhappy town. The forces surrounding the place were commanded by
Schalk-Burger and Louis Botha, who doubtless, with Pretorian dames, were
the heroes of the hour.

On Sundays Divine Service took place in the Church of England, the
Congregational minister's house, and in the Convent, all these religious
devotions partaking of a particularly solemn and earnest character.
Every man stood, as it were, with his life in his hands before his God,
and week after week it was impossible to say which of the devout flock
might be missing, and have gone out into the invisible to solve the
_grana peut-etre_. There was a pathetic atmosphere surrounding these
religious meetings that none who joined in them will ever forget.

On the 8th of December a very brilliant operation took place at
Lombard's Kop. General Hunter, with a hundred picked men of the Imperial
Light Horse under Colonel Edwards (5th Dragoon Guards), and five hundred
Natal Carabineers under Colonel Royston, started from Ladysmith camp
about nine o'clock on the previous night. Four abreast they marched from
the outpost and faded in the gloom. The march lay across a stony, rugged
plain, through the scrub of mimosa bush and among dongas deep and
shallow. Close on the heels of Major Henderson and several of the Corps
of Guides the troops pressed on. About ten o'clock they reached the base
of the hill under Lombard's Kop, and there took up a position. While
still pitch dar