attempt to interfere with it, and thus debarred the procession from
interfering with them.

But meanwhile domestic concerns were getting serious, and absorbing the
minds of the people. The grocers of Kimberley are a respectable and, in
the aggregate, a public-spirited body of citizens; they are men of
substance; most honourable; most humane, too; and, as events were to
show, most human. With fine foresight they detected in the conflagration
of patriotism which consumed the consumer, a chance of bettering
themselves. Having a constitutional right to do it, they took this tide
in their affairs at what they (rather hastily) conceived to be its
flood. Actuated by motives of the new ("enlightened") self-interest,
they had proceeded to run up the prices of their goods by nice and easy
gradations of from ten to twenty, thence to fifty, and were well on
their way to a hundred, per cent., when a thunderbolt, an unexpected
projectile, smashed the ring. It was a pity, in a way, for the process
of welding the ring, so to speak, had been carried out with admirable
skill. Rich folk, whose balances at the bank ran into six, and seven,
figures, had commenced operations; they were buying up supplies of all
and sundry, and hanging the expense. People with a thousand or two were
nowhere in the aristocratic rush, and they waxed indignant; they could
buy a quantity of provisions, to be sure; but semi-millionaires could
buy so much more--a shop or two, perchance. Thus it was that the
"comfortable classes" deemed it their duty to protest. And right royally
did the common people, who had only the sweat of their brows, join in
the protest. The public, in fine, were thoroughly roused, and denounced
in unmeasured terms the conduct and the "enterprise" of the grocers. The
women were much alarmed; they collected together in wrathful groups to
enquire where the matter was to end, and with peculiar unanimity, not to
say satisfaction, to prophesy a revolution. This bound in the cost of
living brought us nearer to a state of panic than ever did the sharp
practice of the Boer artillery. The Colonel heard of it--what did he not
hear? Deputations waited on him; his intervention was solicited; he
agreed to intervene. And then came a splendid exhibition of the
autocracy of Martial Law. We had not yet seen all that it could do (far
from it!), and it was a pleasure, in the circumstances, to see the
Colonel put his foot down, since the step was highly approved