ng away--also that I did not like to travel on a Sunday. This latter
reason he fully appreciated, and arranged with me to come to his house
the following day, for which purpose he left me a permit, vilely
scrawled in Dutch. I mentally reserved to myself the decision as to
keeping the rendezvous. We sat down to breakfast together, although, as
he could speak no English and I could speak no Dutch, the conversation
was nil. He was pleased with the cigarette I offered him, and observed
me with some curiosity, probably never having seen anything approaching
an English lady previously. Before he left, I complained, through an
interpreter, of the insobriety of my self-constituted sentinel Dietrich,
remarking it was quite impossible I could stand such a man dogging my
footsteps much longer. He promised to report the matter, and insisted on
shaking hands with great cordiality.

It was fortunate I had not accompanied De Koker, for that very evening
back came Mr. Keeley, who had luckily succeeded in satisfying the
suspicions of General Snyman, and who had received a permit to reside on
his farm during the war. He brought me a letter in Dutch from the same
authority, refusing, "owing to the disturbed state of the country," to
give me a pass to Mafeking, and requesting me to remain where I was,
under the "surveillance of his burghers." It was exactly the
surveillance of one of his said burghers I wished to avoid; but there
seemed no possibility of getting rid of Dietrich, who evidently
preferred his comfortable quarters at the hotel to roughing it in the
laager. I was exceedingly disappointed, and also somewhat indignant with
Mr. Keeley, who firmly believed, and was much cast down by, some
telegrams he had read out in the laager, relating the utter defeat of
15,000 English at the Modder River;[31] 1,500 Boers, he stated, had
surrounded this force, of which they had killed 2,000. I stoutly refused
to credit it till I had seen it in an English despatch. But all this was
enough to subdue the bravest spirit; we had received practically nothing
but Dutch information during the last six weeks, telling of their
successes and English disasters; we had seen nobody but our enemies.
Even if one did not allow oneself to believe their tales, there was
always a sort of uncomfortable feeling that these must contain some
element of truth. Fortunately, however, I was reading an account of the
Franco-German War in 1870, and there I found that the same