were allowed to play about the streets, and women went shopping,
according to the custom of their sex all the world over. Kaffir girls
stood in groups at street corners, swaying their bodies as they beat
noiseless time with their bare feet to the monotonous drone of
mouth-organs or Jews'-harps, which most of them carry strung about their
necks, wherewith to banish dull care in the many moments of leisure
snatched from toil, and beaming broad smiles on every dusky swain who
passed. But the rumour got about that General Joubert had threatened to
bombard the town indiscriminately if our guns fired lyddite at his
batteries, and this threat had unknown terrors for the simple, who did
not realise that, whether discriminately or indiscriminately, Boer
shells would continue to fall in Ladysmith streets all the same.

So far as I can find out, General Joubert never sent such a foolish
message, but the rumour--possibly put about by Boer agents--served its
purpose by inducing a timorousness in some minds, and men who had no
fear for themselves began to get very anxious about the safety of wives
and children. That was the keynote of a speech made by Mr. Farquhar at
the public meeting yesterday, when he, as Mayor of Ladysmith, made
official announcement of General Joubert's proposals. Mr. Farquhar is a
cautious Scotsman, whose sense of responsibility in such a crisis would
compel him to put the gravest phase of the case first. The Boer
conditions, however, met with nothing but indignant protests, nobody
venturing to raise his voice in favour of them except by way of comment
on the utterances of some fiery orator, who was for asking the General
to send back threats of dire punishment on every Boer if a shot should
be fired into the town. Mr. Charles Jones, who was a transport rider in
the Boer war of 1881, and carried Sir Evelyn Wood's despatches through
the enemy's lines to a beleaguered garrison, was first to express in
calm, manly words what was afterwards found to be the general feeling of