led ardour to make things as lively for the white man
as they possibly could. This kept nearly all the forces then at the
front actively employed in that direction, leaving the field open to the
residue of the Gaikas and Hlambis to burn and pillage throughout British
Kaffraria at their own sweet will. The destruction of property was
great and widespread.

Still, on the whole, men seemed rather to enjoy the prevailing state of
things than otherwise, even those who were severe losers, strange to
say. The colonial mind, adventurous at bottom, dearly loves excitement,
once it has drunk at that enchanted fountain. Perhaps one of the best
illustrations of this is to be found in the numbers who remained, and do
remain, on at Johannesburg after the collapse, in a state of
semi-starvation--rather than exchange the liveliness and stir of that
restless and mushroom town for the surer but more sober conditions of
life offered by the scenes of their birth. In British Kaffraria, the
renewed outbreak of hostilities afforded plenty of excitement, which
went as a set-off against the aforesaid losses--for the time being at
any rate. Those who had already taken part in the first campaign either
volunteered for the second or stayed at home and talked about both.
Though whether he had been out or not made no difference as regarded the
talking part of it, for every man jack you might meet in a day's
wandering was open to give you his opinion upon what had been done, and
what hadn't been done; above all upon what _should_ have been done; in a
word, felt himself entirely competent to direct the whole of the field
operations there and then, and without even the traditional minute's
notice.

But however enjoyable all this may have been to society at large, as
there represented, there was one to whom it was intolerably irksome, and
that one was Eustace Milne. The reasons for this were diverse. In the
first place, in the then crowded state of the community, he could hardly
ever obtain an opportunity of talking, with Eanswyth alone; which was
not wholly without advantage in that it enabled the latter to keep up
her _role_; for if her former sorrowing and heart-wrung condition had
now become the hollowest mockery, there was no reason why everybody
should be informed thereof, but very much the reverse. He could not see
her alone in the house, for it was always full of people, and when it
was not, still, the walls were thin. He could not ta