WAR.

The town of Doppersdorp was in the wildest state of excitement and
delight. We say delight, because anything which tended to stir the
soporific surface of life in that centre of light and leading was
productive of unqualified satisfaction, and the tidings which had now
arrived to effect this result were of no less importance than the
announcement that hostilities had actually broken out in the Transkei.

At the street corners men stood in knots discussing the news; in the
stores, swinging their legs against counters, and blowing out clouds of
Boer tobacco, this was the topic of conversation, while semi-nude and
perspiring natives rolled the great wool bales in and out, and those at
the receipt of custom dispensed wares or took payment in listless,
half-absent fashion; of such enthralling interest was the turn events
had taken. But it was in the bars, where glasses filled and emptied
to-day with abnormal briskness, that the Doppersdorp tongue wagged fast
and free.

True, the Transkei was a long way off, but the ruction would never stop
there. It was bound to spread. The Gaikas and Hlambis in British
Kaffraria were bound to respond to the call of the Paramount Chief. The
contagion would spread to the Tembus, or Tambookies, within the Colonial
territory, and were there not extensive Tembu locations along the
eastern border of the district of Doppersdorp itself? This was bringing
the matter very near home indeed. The enterprise of Doppersdorp was
aroused, its martial spirit glowing at white heat. This indeed has its
disadvantages; for at such a rate, with every citizen burning to sally
forth and distinguish himself in the tented field, Doppersdorp would be
deserted; and it was clear that with all its male inhabitants occupied
at a distance, subduing Kreli and his recalcitrant Gcalekas, that
illustrious Centre of the Earth would be left at the mercy of all
comers.

At Jones' hospitable board, as the shades of evening fell, the tidings
were discussed far more eagerly than the painted yellow bones and rice
to which allusion has been made. From Jones himself in the pride of
office at the head of the table, through the manager of the local bank
and a storekeeper's clerk or two, down to the journeymen stonemasons and
waggon-maker's apprentices at the lower end, the same topic was on every
tongue. The Gcalekas had attacked and routed a strong body of Police in
the Transkei, and had killed several men and an off