y, bringing the strange story that the old "Long
Tom" of Pepworth Hill was hit full in the muzzle by "Lady Anne," that
the charge inside him burst, the gun was shattered, and five gunners
killed. The Kaffir swore he himself had been employed to bury them, and
that the thing he said was true. If so, our "Lady Anne" has made the
great shot of the war. The authorities are inclined to believe the
story. The new gun on Gun Hill is perhaps too vigorous for our old
friend, and the rifling on his shells is too clean. Whatever the truth
may be, he gave us a lively time morning and afternoon. I think he was
trying to destroy the Star bakery, about one hundred yards below my
cottage. The shells pitched on every side of it in succession. They
destroyed three houses. A Natal Mounted Rifle riding down the street was
killed, and so was his horse. In the afternoon shrapnel came raining
through our eucalyptus trees and rattling on the roof, so I accepted an
invitation to tea in a beautiful hole in the ground, and learnt the joys
spoken of by the poet of the new _Ladysmith Lyre_:--

"A pipe of Boer tobacco 'neath the blue,
A tin of meat, a bottle, and a few
Choice magazines like _Harmsworth's_ or the _Strand_--
sometimes think war has its blessings too."

But one wearies of the safest rabbit-hole in an afternoon tea-time, and
I rode to the other end of the town trying to induce my tenth or twelfth
runner to start. So far, three have gone and not returned, one did not
start, but lay drunk for ten days, the rest have been driven back by
Boers or terror.

As I rode, the shells followed me, turning first upon Headquarters and
then on the Gordons' camp by the Iron Bridge, where they killed two
privates in their tents. I think nothing else of importance happened
during the day, but I was so illusioned with fever that I cannot be
sure. Except "Long Tom," the guns were not so active as yesterday, but
some of them devoted much attention to the grazing cattle and the
slaughter-houses. We are to be harried and starved out.

_December 2, 1899._

To me the day has been a wild vision of prodigious guns spouting fire
and smoke from uplifted muzzles on every hill, of mounted Boers, thick
as ants, galloping round and round the town in opposite directions, of
flashing stars upon a low horizon, and of troops massed at night, to no
purpose, along an endless road. But I am inspired by fever just now, and
in duller moments I am st