e, until it was
practically surrounded by Boers, and they often gathered about the hotel
doors listening furtively to every scrap of gossip or news that fell
from officers.

At length the course was taken that might have saved much trouble if put
into practice days earlier, by making peremptory the order that all
non-residents who could not show the necessary permit to remain should
clear out within twenty-four hours, or be subject to arrest and
imprisonment. At the same time a warning went round that none would,
after the allotted time, be allowed to pass our outposts coming or
going, and so perforce many who would have been glad to get away
remained, having missed their last chance of going southwards by train.
What has become of them since then I do not know, unless they have taken
refuge with non-combatants, and sick and wounded, in the neutral camp.
At any rate, they are not here now, and that is something to be thankful
for, though they could give little information to the enemy, except that
shelling has done surprisingly little harm, and killed or wounded very
few in proportion to the enormous number of projectiles thrown. This in
spite of good guns, aimed with most accurate skill, is attributable
solely to the fact that the shells were too weakly charged to burst with
much destructive effect.

But the spies--for they were certainly nothing less--had done their work
in locating every point of military importance or personal interest in
Ladysmith, and it is hardly possible to doubt that this knowledge was
imparted to Boer gunners, who promptly began training their heaviest
artillery in the direction of supply depots, ordnance stores,
headquarters, intelligence offices, and other places not visible from
the enemy's positions, though within easy range of, and therefore
commanded by them, if the gunners knew exactly where to aim so that
projectiles might drop over intervening houses and trees. When the most
destructive shell burst in my bedroom most people regarded it as an
accidentally erratic shot, intended for some other mark. Those who
suggested that time and place had been deliberately chosen because
Colonel Frank Rhodes, Doctor Jameson, Sir John Willoughby, General
French with his staff, and other officers, were known to have lunched in
the Royal Hotel on several previous days, met with nothing but ridicule.
Colonel Rhodes especially made light of the idea that any gun could
shoot so accurately as to get with