spectacle. The troops and Volunteers
with the bands of their respective regiments headed the cortege. There
was profound sadness in the faces of the vast assemblage that crowded
the streets. The twenty-four coffins were lowered into the graves, amid
a solemn silence broken now and then by the Ministers of religion who
read the burial services. It was an awe-inspiring scene, that will be
long remembered in the Diamond City.

The signalling went on as usual in the evening. Heavy fighting, we were
told, had taken place at Modder River, with considerable loss on both
sides. That was all; it was enough; news of that nature was not
satisfying. The De Beers Directors assembled to hold their adjourned
meeting, and to adjourn it again. Mr. Rhodes acknowledged that he had
been wrong in his calculations. Everybody was wrong, but nobody except
Cecil played the candid friend.

Friday was peaceful; an opportune occasion for reviewing our losses. All
told, forty lives had been lost. The recent disaster brought down upon
the military authorities a chorus of adverse criticism. It had been
discovered, too, that it was not the _first_ disaster; and for the
losses sustained in the earlier sorties the Colonel and his advisers
were also condemned. This was hard on the military, whose conduct of
previous operations had been extolled by the men in the street who now
inveighed against it. There were, of course, fair-minded people who were
too honest not to remember this; but they could not _forget_ their meat
allowances; and they wrathfully connived at the hard sayings without
going so far as to join in their dissemination. But, indeed, what with
regrets, tragedies, dry bread, and indifferent dinners--their combined
effect was not to lift us high above ourselves (later on, the altitude
was better). Down at the railway station extensive preparations were
being made for the revivial of traffic. Hundreds of men were employed
laying down new rails, and widening the _terminus_--to provide space for
the miles of trams in the wake of the Column. The Royal Engineers,
accompanying the troops, were repairing the line as they advanced. Other
people, who knew better, had it that a new railroad through a circuitous
route was being made. This was asserted with a positiveness, a
clearness, as it were, of second sight that cowed all promptings of
common sense. But it was not of supreme importance by what route the
train came, if it only came soon. Not a few