A BURGHER OF THE FREE STATE *

Press, Volume LVII, Issue 10723, 1 August 1900, Page 3

A BURGHER OF THE FREE STATE *

By RUDYARD KIPLING,

PART I.

Our Lord that gave the Ox command To kneel to Judah's King, He binds Hig front upon the land, lo_ ripen it for spring; To ripen it for sprinrr. good sirs, According to His Word— Which we.i must be, e.s you can see; Aud who shall juage the LORD? When we poor feuners walk the ice, Or shiver c:i !:>.« wold, Wo hear the cry of a single tree That breaks her heart in cold; That breaks her heart in cold, good sirs, And rendeth by the board— Which well must be, as you can see— And who shall judge the LORD? Her wool is era-zed and little worth Exce;>i.:r.g as to bum, So we may warm and make our mirth _Ur.til the spring return; L'ntil the spring return, good sirs, With marish all abroad— Which well must b-?, as you can see— And who shall judge the LORD? God bless the master of this house And all that sleep therein— And guard the fens' from pyrat folk, And save us all from sin! To walk in charity, good sirs, Aswel we may affoord— Which fhall befriend our later end, Accounting to the LORD. —Old Lincolnshire (?) Carol.

From the little hill near Bloemfontein Old Fort you command ninety miles of country towards Kimberley, and when Kimberley besieged uses her searchlight you can see the wheeling beam as clearly as Israel saw the pillar of flame. If you are loyal you ascend the hill singing with your friends, and gloat over the ringed city. If you are disloyal you creep up without music, lie down among the boulders hidden from the police, and whisper to fellow disloyalists, "Kimberley's all right." Allen, of the Bloemfontein "Banner," though ha did not gloat, was loyal. He had sailed to Capetown from Edinburgh forty years ago—a master printer of seven years, moved suddenly to take up the missionary work which in those days was Scotland's special field. There he met the Kaffir; saw through

him with keen eyes, and, it is to be suspected, saw through the missionary, for he backslid to the stick and the case on an early up-country paper. Then he married a Dutch girl—a connection of the President Brand, and well-to-do. She led him across the Orange to a fat, lazy land full of cattle, slaves, and game, for the Free Stats "farmers" had not yet discovered the European skin market.

He farmed a little on liis wife's property, shot a many head of buck, went to Ivimberley when De Beers was "Colesberg Kopje," lost money in diamond-mining, but made it helping to print the first paper on tbe fields; lost his wife of typhoid, refused more matrimony, and rediscovered his old love in tine office of the young Bloemfontein "Banner." He was convinced tliat unless you treated Kaffirs much as the Dutch treated them, they were worthless, but be could not bring himself to the treatment which came so easily even to his adored Katie. Wherefore, he exchanged his farm for a little tin-roofed house on the outskirts of Bloemfontein, grew the roses of that favoured land, and for a few languid hours daily condescended to the "Banner" pressroom. It was an idyllic life that began—after he had looked to his roses—with the little stroll through the broad streets where all Bloemfontein nodded friendly; that led, with many street-corner conversations,

across the market square to his worn stool in the long, low "Banner" office. Here he turned over the stick till lunch time, locked up the page with old-fashioned wooden quoins, told the Kaffir to pull a proof, corrected it, tolerant of many misprints (forty years in th© Free State wear down Edinburgh standards), told another Kaffir to start the rheumatic oil engine that temperately revolved the big press, and loafed out into the market square.

The linen suit and long yellow beard, streaked with white, the brown eyes behind tho brass spectacles, the black velvet smokiug-cap, and the .green carpet slippers were as well known in the square as the market building itself. When m-en saw tho corner of Allen's shoulder prop the corner of the chemist's shop, where they sell Dutch and English medicines, they knew the "Bar__er" would be selling on the street in ten minutes. When he shuffled between the ox-waggons, the bent-wood pipe purring in his beard, Bloemfontein knew that Allen went to his roses and his evening's levee in the verandah.

His wife's relations were many, and of exceeding friendliness. A few, nieces chiefly, were good-looking, and Allen's home offered an excellent base for large young vromen from small villages, who came to shop in the capital. One or other of them would house—eep for Allen the year round, and all Katie's kin were superb cooks. As head of the "Banner*' press-room, Allen was supposed to be weU-informed politically, and on occasion would speak a good word for a backward advertiser. His levees were attended by English shopkeepers, farmers who, at their wives' bidding, bad stayed over to shop, and the small fry of casual station-maisters, guards, teiegraphists, and subord-iate civil servants. Then ha would spread his slippered feet on the vera_dah rail, drink coffee, and, as a burgher of forty years' standing, would expound' the wiiole duty of the Free State, which was to keep itself to itself, and "chastise the Hollander." In later years the "Ba-ner troubled him a little. He had seen it change from a leisurely medium for meditations on cattleraising, reports of sermons, rifle meetings, and the sins of local officials, all padded • Copyright, London and New York, by Rudyani" Kipling, 1900.

with easy clippings out of English and Capetown papers, to a purposeful, malignant daily under control of a German whose eyes. AHen said, were too close together, and whose aim in life seemed to be ridicule of the English.

Now Allen had no special love for the English, of whom there were many in Bloemfontein. He had seen tbem beaten in '81, and though at the time he tried to explain what the resources of England were, he had seen them stay beaten before all his world. They irritated him in some of their manifestations as an over-per-nicketty breed who did not think at the standard pace of two and a half miles an hour, which is the pace of an ox-waggon. But the sun and the soft airs, the lazy black labour, and the much talk by the wayside soon wheeled them into line.

What need, then, to worry and taunt them as did Bergmar-n, for none, having once drunk of the Orange River, would go back to unverandahed, umbrellaed, unhallowed, competitive days in dirt at elbowpush of hungry equals. English folk might be strangers in the land, but who, if you came to that, were the Bergmamns, the Enselins, the Hoffmanns, the Badenhorsts, the Savers, and a hundred others? Moreover, Bergmann, when he was not prying into folks' ancestry, had helped to found a thing called the Bond, and by the same token, had been publicly rapped over the knuckles for it by none other than Allen's uncle-in-law, the great Sir John Brand, who had written a letter that made Bergmann furious. Allen agreed with his uncle-in-law. His vision did not extend much further than a ford across the Orange River and a Dutch girl's face under her cap, smiling at him as he clumsily whacked the oxen, till they came up panting and wet-flanked into this, the land of his peace. For years Allen felt that Bergmann of the narrow eyes and the inveterate hate would trouble their large quiet, but—but ho was accustomed to his seat in the "Banner" office, and his hands, itching for the type, drew him there daily. His tongue alone was unshackled by custom, and here the Scot in him died hard.

"I'm a student o' political economy mysalf," he said one evening, in the face of a most yvon-derful sunset. "An' I've obsairved from my visits to Pretoria that the Hollander is a swine. He's like the teredo in the 'Encyclopaedia Britannica.' Aye, Elsfe"—this to his wife's second cousin, a lady witli Pretorian graces—"l know ye anarrit one, an' ye can c'en tell him when ye go home my opeenion of his nationality. 'The Hollander's the curse o' the Transvaal. What for? Because the Transvaal's eegnorant. The Hollander edges in, an' edges in, an' talk's the tickets an' runs the machinery o' State. My word, if I trusted your Gert, Elsie, that's the most eegT-orant job-con.poser ever" foaled, though I took n-Lm in for the sake o' the family, an' he's some kin to Mrs Bersnnann too— I s-ay, if I let. your Gert order the new type, whairr'd I be? Precisely whaur the Transvaal'll be before many years. "We must keep the Hollander out o' here. With our system o' education—an' for that we must thank old Brand, my Katie's uncle —-they've precious little chance of our public offices. But they'll try, an' what they canmiot reach they'll ruin. There's ower much runnin' to and fro o' Hollanders these days between Pretoria an* here."

No one cared to speak out in- Aunt Elsie's presence, but ,~e t four women of old Free State stock murmured assent. Time was when the Free State, as better born and better educated, had been roughly looked up to by the unshorn Transvaal. Now the Tr__osvaalers had grown rich be-, yond tha wildest hope of the Free State, and, if possible, ruder. In a hundred ways —principally by the Hollanders—it was borne in upon- the Free State that she must take the second place. The Pretoria worms n, too, shopped in Johannesburg; and when one visited them they flaunted their crockery and thdr curtains in their sisters' faces. Hirsbanda grew rich, in Pretoria. "Hollanders go away Whetn they have made the money," one of the company hinted. 'They are not good sons of the soil. Now, if we had! not been aheated out of our diamond mines we should have been rich too."

r Yes, but we know how to spend it when it is made," said Aunt Elsie, flus-Ming angrily. "We do not couat each lump of sugar in tbe coffee —and our funerals! You should just see! I had four new black silk dresses this year when the typhoid was so bad. At tbe back of our house"—she leaned forward impressively, bulging in her French stays—"there is a heap this high" —s_e lifted an arm—"of empty tins. AU tinned things. Our English servant is so wasteful."

"Ye've jist hit it, Elsie. It's the tins do the mischief. Ye've never had more than the rudiments of airth-scratchin'—l'll not call it fam_n'—up yonder, but ye're by with that even. Last time I went to Grobkars after the buck, the whole deestrict was livin' on options fra' the mini-' companies—options an' State grants. They'd done withe last pretence o' fannin' —itobaeco, mealies, an' all. They'd not put their hand to a single leevin' thing, as I set here, except order tinned good- fra' Johanr_aberg—tinned things an' sweeties. Ah, the tins!" "That is why you have so much typhoid," said the wife of a Bloer_£c«ntein saddler—_n Old Colony girl—and shook her fingers daintily above the bowl of peach conserve. have more than typhoid in time," said Uncle Allen". "They'll pay for their tiim~d things. They'll have Hollanders. Berg-iann's gone to his account, and I've naught 4o say o' him. Mrs Bergmann owns the 'Banner,' an' his pdcture's in the press-troom. I asked him once if lie wished to make the Free State a warldPoweT. A_nighty! the man was angry!" "He only wrote the truth about the English. Bergmann was a very great man. He started the Bond. He was a true patriot," said Aunt Elsie. "Aye! Ve-~a like your husband in Pretoria, Elsie." "It is because you're English in your heart. All you Uitlanders are alike." "Tak* notice here, Elsie." Allen wagged a type-blackened forefinger across the teatable. "Berg-tann nicked up that talk about Urtkinders wr-__ be helped make the

Bond that's the curse of Africa, though Braird, mv Katie's uncle, told him he was Kswin' seeds o' dissension where irone should exist. He tatted -Uitlander, an' I've set it np for him in Dutch an' English. Pretoria picked Urriander up from Bergmann, because you're no clever enough in Pretoria to do more than steal.

"Pour you another cup o' coffee an' stop fi-dlin' wi' your loormetetriirgs, Elsie. Twenty year now—-I mind the time there was none of it—you've been crying 'Uitlandta- this, Uitlander that.' till you're fair poisoned with it. There were no Uitlanders till Bergmann and the Bond that was his master, as he was mine, an' Pretoria created them an' stirred 'em up. Ye've heard o' Frankenstein's monster? It's a common s-ip ye're warned against in Edinburgh, not to let a contributor call him Frankenst-een, an' was a s_i„in' fine in Bk-ckwood's. Well, .we'll let that pass. Ye've been at great pains to make a Frankenstein " "Ah, you always talk so silly, uncle. I db not understand." ,7 Ye will, Elsie — ye will. I'm foreman o' the 'Banner' press-room, an' Mrs Bergmann's employee, because I just love the sound o' the type, .an' I'm a burgher o' forty years to boot —that's more than most o' them ore—an' I love my country. Wait a while, Ai'lsie. Yell see the end o' what I've set up the beginning of.'

Young Dessauer, Mrs Bergmann's second cousin, now editor of the "Banner," was doing his best to out-Herod his deceased uncle, whose portrait in grievous oils adorned the press-room. He had all the old man's fluency, and none of his power. Allen remembered —he had— _; long memory —the first time ,he had <*:t up the phrases, "our Nation" (upper case N), "the Afrikander Nationality," and "the necessity for closer union. Now, it seemed, he composed little else. Youn-g Dessauer spent half his time in company of Hollanders from Pretoria— smooth-faced Continentals in black Albert coats and) White linen—who spoke all tongues except honest Taal, and visited President Steyn eternally. The compositors of the "Banner," scenting good things, talked much of the import of the leading articles that appeared after these interviews. "I've only one opeenion," said Allen, correcting proof by the. -window ; "if we go on as we're gaun, we out our own throats, neither more than less. We need no dealin's withe Transvaal." This, of course, was doily reported to Dessauer, who __>o_e to Allen before the men. Said Allen, pushing up his spectacles, "It's no odds to mc if you dismisvS mc this cay—except I'm tliinkin' you'll find very few duplicates of Allen on the premises wQien ye want to make up the paper-"

'That is not tthe point," said young Dessauer, pulling up his collar. "You are no true son- of the soil if you talk treason in this way. And in his office!" "And when did your fat-lier 'trek across the Orange?" said Allen in Dutch. "Fifteen years after mc! He outsparmed at my Katie's door in the big drouth, an' she took you from your mother's arms an' ye puked over the front of her frock. They'd gi'en you a bit o' biltong to chew, because your .mother had no milk, and it wrenclied your poor' stomach, Dessauer. Well, I'm wartin' on ye. I was a burgher before ye were 'breeched. Maybe I'm too old to understand this talk o' treason ye're so -ooms free with." "I- was only saying- you liave ho right to talk so—unpatriotically in this office." "If my country, that I've never set foot out of since the sixties, is to be jockeyed into a war by you an' the like o' you, an' that old fool Steyn that runs about yvritin' his name in the girls' plush autograph albuans, I must not talk. Eh? 'Fore God, man, don't I set up the mischief ye do? I helped Bergmann build his Uitlander bogey that served him so well. What more d'ye want? "Yell stop my talkin'—me, a burgher o' tire Free State that was married to Brand's niece, and out in Moshesh's war, and a Blackwood's man, before your mother met your father! -Ye go too fast, Dessauer. This is the Free St_te—yet. We'll wait till the Transvaal .rave annexed us before we shut our mouths. Lock up the telegraph page!" Said [Mrs Berg—.arm of tUie placid face and the white hair when this rebellion was reported:—"Yes—yes, nephew, he is no good in the poldtik, but he knows more about the paper than even I do. You know nothing, nephew, and he is cheap. Later or.' —when—when things are different, we can teach him."

The summer of that year was a sad time for the stranger in Bloemfontein. Thicker and thicker grew the press of agitated Hollanders at the President's -house; wilder and w3_er grew Dessauer's leaders, and blacker grew Allen's face. Through weary weeks he had heard.nothing but appeals to God and the Mauser—-had set up fathoms of it—had seen the advertisements give place to Government proclamations, and had wondered who paid for them. Strangers from the north accused him of Uitran-der sympathies in the market-place; his compositors were ins-bord'inate, and old friends cut hiim in the street with ostentation. To be fair, these same friends would come by twilight among the roses, and in whispers ask what the Free State expected to gain fro_- the war and why— this in the smallest of whispers—the burghers bad not been more freely consulted in the -matter. 'Tt's too late to ask now. Ye've never read Carlyle's 'French Revolution.' I have. You'd not understand if I explained, but we're been denouncin' each other for lack o T patriotism till we're just afraid to speak our own minds," he" "answered. "So, yell note the State has been sold for a handful of Transvaal tobacco—and we'll not get the tobacco. We've asked the Hollander to put foot on our neck an' he's done it. He'll bring in the Tr_nsv_aler that's been livin' on other people these past ten years. He'll not reform now.

"Did ye note that Transvaal commando that's camped behind the station? So long as they can lift cattle on the border they'll leave us alone. If they come back they'll take our stock. Mark my yvord! If we win we'll be annexed by, the Transvaal. If "But you must not say that England will win, uncle," said the niece in charge, with a coquettish flirt of the head. "That would be traftjorous. Look how we beat England in the last war." "I'm saying ncthing but that we'll be annexed by the Transvaal. We're annexed already, and not a man of us ail lifted his voice. They'll strip us hoof, horn," and hid?. Here endeth the Free State." He turned up the empty coffee cup with a chuckle. "I'll have to pay for this, but the truth's never economical." In d_-U-t cf pony, horse, ?.„d bridle, they commr_rs_i£red Allen to the tune 'cf £50 fieriing, and a veldt-comet of old acquaintance tried to improve the occasion by a few remarks on treason. "Ye're a fool/ said Allen. "I know bow

much of a fool ye are, an' that's more even than your mother knows. Ye're not a fool on your own account, Which would be sense of a sort. Ye're a Hollander's fool—sold like a Kaffir. An' ye may tell whom ye please. Now, if yell pack awa' your folly on Niekirk's best pony, which I see ye've stole for your own ends, I'll c'en go to office an' &et up young Dessauer's notion o' the Free State as a world-Power." A few days later. Aunt Elsie came down from Pretoria on a visit, and explained how a veldt-cornet, her own nephew, had taken from her form near Bloemfontein three yoke of bullocks after, for due consideration, he had promised to spare them. "That's the beg_r_ii-* o't," said Allen, grimly. "Hoof, horn, an' hide, I think I said. Elsae."

'*How do I know -what you said?" sl>.€ answered pettishly. "He gave mc no com-mando-note. He drove tliem off the farm. He should have taken old Kok's—who is rich." "But he's gaun to marry Annette Kok after the war," Allen grinned. "Oh, that is it—is it?—the rascal! But what shall I do? My husband is so busy —so busy at Pretoria " "No? He'll not have gone on commando, then?"

"And my brother, he is with Cronje; and my other brother, he is with Botha, and they will not write to mc. They are so busy shooting xooineks-—and I want my oxen back. Here am I—an official's wife —and they take my oxen, look you!" "Why don't ye write to Botha or Cronje? —maybe they'll listen. You're the third woman o' our kin that's come to mc to-day complainin' o' just this kind o' trouble. An' we're only at the begin-in." "Oh, but the war will be over in a few weeks. You think? Look how we have shot them everywhere. There are not enough men in England to come—my husband says so." "Elsie, woman, ye don't know what war means—n-or I either, but we'll know be-fore the call. And," he added, irrelevantly, "ye've not even seen Edinburgh." The commandoes went southward in trains—Free Staters and Transvaalers together, each boasting agains'; the other -what they would do with the rooineks. It was rumoured that the Old Colony had risen even to the sea; that the Bond had thrown off the mask and established a Federal Government in Capetown, and that the Queen of England "had refused' to sign the declaration of war."

Men returned by scores from Colesberg and the south on the easily-granted furlougli of those early days, and, laughing, said there was no need to fight—their friends across tbe border were doing it all for them. Here and there a man had been wounded, but the game went (beyond all expectation. KrmibeTley was cut off frotrn help; Mafeking hung like a ripe plum ready to drop at a touch ; Ladysmith was incidentally surrounded, while the commandoes swept toyrards the sea; Molteno, Mkidleburg, Aliwal North, Burghersdorp, Hopetown, Barkly West—they gave the yvell-known tale of the districts—were up and out and the others behind them only waited till the Federal commandoes should come through.

"An' I'm no fond o' the word Federal," said Allen, as he set it up. "It's the last step after annexation, instead of the first to it." The wounded arrived from Belmont (a few of them —the rest were placed in. out-, lying hospitals) and Graspan and Modder. Allen did not quite understand tbe drift c:f the telegrams describing these events. Many, who till then had written regularly to their wives, ceased, and though the authorities explained that they were busy, the women felt uneasy. Moreover, there was a rumour—they learned it from a Transvaal commando going south and forgetting to pay for c&ickens—t—at the cree Staters had not done so well at Modder. "We'll show you how to shoot rooineks," said the Transvaalers. "You get too fat, living in this good land. If you do not fight it will be m •arse for you."

Then came tJhe week of joy—Colenso, Storrr_be.rg, and Ma^rslfon*e_n —in three blinding flashes. The Federals could hardly believe their luck—seventeen guns (it was thirty by -the time the news reached Bloemfontein), 4000 men killed, wounded, and prisoners. Surely the English wou'd now see the error of the cruel war that they had forced upon a God-fearing race. The "Banner" said so, demanding indemnities and annexations by the inducible minimum. "We're lyin' too mucb," thought Allen, toying with the tweezers. 'Tve no supersteetious reverence for truth, but this is sheer waste. H'm! The English are figtiitin' us wi' native troops. Are they? It's not likely. They're floggin' prisoners an' burn-in' an' ravis-in' broadcast. No. That's not likely, either. Continuous black type tires the eye."

He went on with his copy. "We've blown the guts out of a Hig-land Brigade; wiped up half a regiment o' North Countrymen ; an' got all the guns o' Bulier's brigade. I'm thinkin' it's no good policy to offend Scotland." He paused for a moment, penetrated with a new idea. " 'Fore God, it's war. If we lose we'll not get what the Transvaal got in '81. It's either us or Scotland—an' that means all England. I wish we bad some news o' what they're sending by way of an army. They're a" dour folk, the Englishry, when they're brought to it." But that info—rlation was denied to the Bloemfontein they might nave known at Pretoria. Now and again a rumour broke through of a bay crowded with ships, of lines congested with troops, of a horrible silence of preparation, broken by odd words of caution from more far-seeing Bond friends in Capetown. But no harm, so fer, brad b-falten the Free State. , The men at the front were all well—the field cornets said so. They wrote little, but they fought with magnificent skill; never losing more than half a dozen at the outside, and these curiously, men of few kin. For visible sign of their success Bloemfontein could see the prisoners and, better still, Kimberley searchlight whirling, whisking, and appealing. They made good jokes, men and maddens together, after dark, on the hill by the old fort, and the police, always armed, grinned tolerantly. Thither, as was his custom ; n these later days, went Allen with a lantern to guide his old feet among the rocks. The rumours troubled him; young Dessauer's face when he filled out tbe telegrams did not accord with their joyful note. Officials talked fluently and uneasily, but their ev« s had not the inward light of victory, a*"d—above were forbidden to go down to the railway station and speak to the English prisoners. The Stonnberg captives,<-the men taken ■ mund Colesberg, the two companies forgotten in a retirenx-ut, and neatly caught white waiting to entrain, were merely sullen, and traeo~TTWnira-.ve, or uttered

foolish threats of vengeance; but the later varieties, gathered here and there to the westward, and sent under escort of a northern commando to wait their turn for the up-country train, spoke in another key. They were not grateful for small attentions; they asked for accommodation as by right, and begged their guards to be civil while vet chance offered.

The effect, of this loose talk was counteracted by over-much official explanation, and it- disturbed Allen's mind. Telegrams came and went, commandoes passed by day and night, firing out of the carriage windows in honour of Bloemfontein, and closed ambulance trains went northward. Nothing was constant except the flare from Kimberley, sometimes lifted like an appealing arm, sometimes falling like a column, and often broken as with horrible mirth.

"See! See!" said a girl, sitting on a camp-tool. "Now Rhodes is hungry! He shakes his finger."

"Oh, no," strid the boy with her. "He is asking Cronje to stop firing while he eats horse-meat." "I wish we could hear the guns." "It is too far," said the boy. "Did you see Cronje's big gun go across from here? It was a tine rooinek-shooter. My brother" —he puffed his cigarette proudly—"is in the States Artillery-." "I like the little buk-buk guns best," the girl replied. She opened a basket and ate a sandwich, brushing away the crumbs from, her Sunday frock. "I think I can hear guns," she said, and clapped her hands. "That's only thunder on the veldt," said Allen, coming up behind her. "Good evening, Ada Frick." "Oah! Is that you, Mister Allen? You have come to see how your friends over there get. on. They are having—an —how do you Uitlanders say it?—a hot time in the town to-night."

The boy, annoyed at an interrupted flirtation, passed over to a Johannesburg policeman squatting in the shadow. Bloemfontein was then policed in large part from Johannesburg; and Bloemfontein did not like it. "There is old Allen," he saidi "You know about him? He is a traitor." "Get out—go down," the man shouted. "Yes, you with the white beard. You have no business here, you old rebel. Keep with the other Uitlanders!" "Are you a Portugee, or a Hollander, or a Dane, or what?" Allen replied. "Y r ou can't talk the Taal." As a matter, of fact he was a young German, rather in request at Bloemfontein teaparties. "Go away; we know all about you. You've come up here to signal to Kimberley with that lantern." Allen laughed aloud. "Then if you know that much, you may know that I married Presidont Brand's niece. I've not' been reckoned a traitor for some feyv years. But we're all traitors now." "Huh!" said the girl, with a giggle. "We all know that the Brand people were not true sons of the soil. That is not a good family to belong to, these times." •

Allen was used to personal insult)—who had never known a hard word till simonths ago —but the reflection on his Katie's kin cut him to the bone. "At any rate," he began, but bit off the sentence. It was no fault of the girl's that she was tainted with native blood. A Frick —and all the earth that had eyes knew whence the- Fricks bad drawn their biack hai-r crisping at the temples and the purplish moons at the base of their fingernails—a Bloemfontein Frick, not three removes from a bastard! of the Kalahari, had derided Brand, whose statue stands at the head of the town!

He stumbled downward, raging, pursued by the laughter of the little company. "Brand no son of the soil —Brand! An' a Zarp—a Johannisberger—to tell mc I'm a traitor! I've never hoped the English 'ud win, but I hope it now—l hope it now! The damned, ungratefu' half-breeds." There was a light in the "Banner" pressroom as he passed. "More proclamations o' that fool, Steyn," he said bitterly. "They keep the job side busy these days. Maybe young Dessauer thinks he'll be made Secretary o* State if he does not press for the bill. What's here, Gert?" he asked at the door.

"His Honour's proclamation," Gert grinned, and Allen watched his hands above the case. "That's no English you're rolling up. What is it?" "Basuto," said Gert. "The Proclamation." Evidently the youngster had private information, denied to his superior. heart stood still. He had heard wild threats that, before long, the Basutos would be invited to rise against the English ; But in Bloenrfontein that talk was coldly received. (To be concluded on Saturday.)