A BOER WAR STORY.

Lake County Press, Issue 975, 15 August 1901, Page 2

A BOER WAR STORY.

A sergeant of irregular horse told me the story, and for the latter part I can vouch personally (writes Percival Gibbon in the 'Daily Chronicle') : "Saunders's sister," said the sergeant, " was some kind of a, school teacher in Johannesburg before the war. Little, fluffy, old-fashioned girl she was, and pretty well able to take care of herself. When Saunders had to go down country in October, she wouldn't go. Said she reckoned the Boers wouldn't want to fight women, so Bob could run away if he wanted to, but she was rooted. Saunders was awfully wild, and did his wildest to shift her, but she was no more to be coaxed or driven than a sow. "So old Saunders had to clear off alone at the last moment; got out, in fact, just in time to save his coat tails when they closed the door. Mary stayed on as she said she would, and stuck to rearing the kids in the way she thought they ought to go. "It was all right at first, and she got along quietly enough. But when the people she was living with were put across the border, and she had to hang alone in a house in Jeppestown, sho started to be a bit frightene^l. "That brute M., the detective, was ramping about then, looking for English to persecute. He knew he was safe enough, with all the crowd away, and no one to knock him down and stamp him into the mud, so he got his talons into Mary Saunders. "He came in a cab and banged at her door one night about twelve. She hopped out of bed, and put on a wrapper over her night gear, and went down to the door. M. wouldn't so much as let her go back to put on a pair of slippers or get her purse. He drove her down to Park station, and lifted her on to a truck and sent her off, half naked, and without a sou, to Delagoa Bay. " She found friends on that train. I reckon, or else somebody helped her at Lorenzo Marquez. Anyway, she got out of the mess all right. But that didn't alter things for M. when Saunders arrived in Johannesburg with his regiment. "You didn't, know Saunders, eh? Well, he's a big. shambling slab-sided Scotchman, with a fist like a ham, and a way of coining in with the right, straight through your guard, sure as the Judgment Day." He spent two days looking for M., keeping up his spirits with a nip every half hour. "He ran his man down in a nice quiet corner of Brandis square, and M., thinking his timo was come to die. nearly went down on his belly to grovel. It didn't do him any good. Old Saunders stood him up against the wall, and he blame near pounded him through it. They kept at it. as happy as you please, for the best part of half an hour, with a sentry, that happened to be posted near, seeing fair play, and warning off interferers with his bayonet. M. collapsed long before Saunders began to let him alone, with a- skin full of broken bones and a. head on him three times its proper size." The Transvaal is free to-day ; as free for the burgher of yesterday as for his victim, the lonely Englishman, 'We have conquered the country in blood and death, and we are winning it afresh with the arts of the peacemaker. The brighter our laurels, then, but. oh! the blood runs hot at times when we, the men who hear these things at first, hand, come face to face with the men who did them.