nce the
cynosure of all eyes. On Friday it was tested, with complete success.
The boom, at close quarters, was loud and alarming; and it required the
despatch of a second shell to satisfy non-spectators that the gun had
not been blown to pieces by the first. A few missiles were sent into the
Intermediate Station, a couple of miles distant. Whether anyone was hurt
did not transpire, but the moral effect produced was unmistakable. A
panic appeared to ensue, and vehicles of all sorts were hurriedly
requisitioned to enable the Boers to get away with their goods and
chattels from the Intermediate to a more healthy station. Private
letters were afterwards unearthed in which no attempt was made to
conceal the alarm occasioned by this unexpected visitation.

But the new gun was only a diversion, while the stream of invective
against horseflesh went on like the brook for ever. It is an ill wind
that blows nobody good; the truth of this was well exemplified in the
luck of the dogs. The poor animals looked shockingly thin and wasted,
and had for a long time been unable to move about with their wonted
agility in pursuit of locusts and mosquitoes. The mongrels that had any
fight or vitality left in them would engage in a terrific struggle on
the streets at night for the contents of the refuse buckets which our
primitive sanitation laws permitted to obstruct the pathways until
morning. It need hardly be said that there was not much in the way of
crusts, scraps, or bones to appease canine hunger, and the resultant
keenness of the competition made the night extremely hideous. This
snarling struggle for existence had gone on night after night to the
supreme annoyance of martyrs who would fain have slept, and who urged
(in letters to the Editor) the wholesale destruction of the snarlers as
a work at once humane, essential, and congenial. This was in pre-horse
food days, when the ox was paramount on our tables.

But now all was changed, and every dog had his day indeed! The
brutes--not knowing the difference--revelled in horseflesh. The people
who could not look at it gave it _all_ to their dogs; while the most
enthusiastic equine meat-eater invariably left a trifle behind him.
Canine gluttony was a source of much amusement, envy, or disgust
(according to the individual temperament); and the ubiquitous cynic
reminded one of a good time coming when the horse would be locally
extinct and "fat dog" the daintiest of diets. The irony of it al