em protection for their persons and property. But what happened?
He himself ordered them to report to the British military authorities,
should any Boer scout or commandos come to their farms, and threatened
them with punishment if they did not do so. Old people also who had
never stirred one step from their farms were fined hundreds of pounds
when the railway or telegraph lines in their neighbourhood were wrecked.
Besides, instead of protection being given to the burghers, their cattle
were taken from them by the military, at prices they would never have
thought of accepting, and often by force. Yes; and from widows, who had
not even sons on commando, everything was taken away. If then the
English, on their part, had broken the contract, were not the burghers
perfectly justified in considering themselves no longer bound by the
conditions which the oath laid on them?

And then if one goes further into the matter, and remembers that the
English had been employing such people as the National Scouts, and had
thus been arming men who had taken the oath of neutrality, how can one
think that the Boer was still under the obligation of keeping his oath?

There is also the obligation which every one is under to his own
Government; for what Government could ever acknowledge an oath which
their citizens had no right to take?

No! taking everything into consideration, no right-minded burgher could
have acted otherwise than to take his weapons up again, not only in
order to be faithful to his duty as a citizen, but also in order not to
be branded as a coward, as a man who in the future could never again
look any one in the face.

I arranged various matters at Doornspruit, in the district of Kroonstad,
on the 23rd of September, 1900, and then went from there in the
direction of Rietfontein, in order to meet the commando which I had
ordered to be at Heilbron on the 25th.

[Footnote 70: Commandant Van Tender had been made prisoner at the same
time, but he eluded the vigilance of his captors, and running for his
life under a shower of their bullets, got away in safety.]

[Footnote 71: Uncle Peter.]

[Footnote 72: Judge.]

CHAPTER XXI

Frederiksstad and Bothaville

When I was on the road to Heilbron, I heard that the commandos under
General Hattingh (those, namely, of Harrismith and Vrede) were near the
Spitskopje, seven miles to the south-east of Heilbron. I therefore went
out of my course and proceeded in the directi