Round the dustbin at the corner of a street half a dozen street boys were gathered, and the driver in his glory passed a word to them also. They did not know where they would get their dinner, and they had not had much breakfast, their whole stock of clothes would not have been worth 1s. 9d., and not one of them had a cap, but they also were a bit of England, and this victory was theirs, and the last I saw of them they were standing each one upon his head and waving joyfully with his feet. 

 “See, sir, how the kids took it,” for my driver was getting more magnificent every minute; “said all along old Buller would do it.”  

 Coming down Euston Road was one blaze of glory, and when we swept into King's Cross Station at the gallop, and my driver saw the crowd of waiting porters and other hangers-on, an audience as yet unspoiled and waiting, ready for such news, it was, I take it, the greatest moment in his life. He pulled up the horse on his haunches, and again stood up on his high place. 

 “Straight from the War Office, as hard as we could drive; it's all right at Ladysmith—the siege is lifted, and old Buller's done it”; and then, to crown the occasion, “Three cheers for General Buller.”  

 He led from the top, and they joined from below, and so great was the excitement that when I offered the usual tip to the porter to carry my things to the carriage, he flatly refused to take it. 

 “Hexcuse me, sir, not to-day; I ain't that sort. You brought the news of Ladysmith.” Which indeed was all my share of the glory of the passage: the rest belonged to my driver, who was indeed a Mercury fit for the work of the gods. 

 Just as the train was starting a man arrived with a pile of newspapers to sell them on the downward journey, for the special editions with the relief of Ladysmith had been got out with vast celerity. It was a pretty sight when the train stopped at some country station to see the man jump out and hear him shout the news, while the people, a moment ago stolid and indifferent, crowded round him to buy the paper. And then the train went on its way, followed by a cheer, because Ladysmith was safe. At one station two respectable country women got into the compartment where I had been alone, and they had been so eager, as their kind is, to secure their places, that they had not caught the news before the train left the station. By-and-by they began talking together, and it appeared that the elderly woman had a son at the front, a reservist in an infantry regiment with General Buller, while the 

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