in command of those
massed, menacing, united laagers on the Border, seven miles from
Gueldersdorp as the crow flew. No more imaginative promises with reference
to the taking of the small, defiant hamlet before breakfast, wiping out
the garrison to a rooinek, and starting on the homeward march refreshed
with coffee and biltong, and driving the towns-people before them as
prisoners of War. The desperate perils presented by the conjectural and
largely non-existent mine were thenceforth to loom largely and luridly in
the telegrams that went up to Pretoria.

"There's a lot in bluff, you know," that "slim duyvel," the Commandant of
the rooineks, said long afterwards. "And we bluffed about the Mines, real
and dummy, for all we were worth!"

So, possibly with premonition of the telegram that was even then clicking
out its message at Pretoria, there was a note of satisfaction in his
whistle out of keeping with the execution actually done, as Nixey's Hotel
came in sight with the Union Jack floating over it, denoting that all was
well. That flagstaff, with its changing signals, was to dominate the
popular pulse ere long. But in these days it merely denoted Staff
Quarters, and War, with its grim accompanying horrors, seemed a long way
off.

A white-gowned European nursemaid on the opposite street-corner waved and
shrieked to her deserting elder charges, and the Chief's quick eye noted
that the small, sunburned, active, bare legs of the boy and girl in cool
sailor-suits of blue-and-white linen twill, were scampering in his
direction. He knew his fascination for children, and instinctively
slackened his stride as they came up, abreast now, and shyly hand in hand:

"Mister Colonel ...?" The speaker touched the expansive brim of a straw
sailor hat with a fine assumption of adult coolness.

"Quite right, and who are you?"

The small boy hesitated, plainly at a nonplus. The round-eyed girl tugged
at the boy's sailor jumper, whispering:

"I _saided_ he wouldn't know you!"

"I fought he would. Because Mummy said he wemembered our names ve uvver
night at ve Hotel ... when he promised ... about ve animals from Wodesia
... all made of mud, an' feavers, and bits of fur ..."

Memory gave up the missing names, helped by those boyish replicas of the
candid clear grey eyes of the Mayor's wife, shining under the drooping
plume of fair hair.

"Mummy was quite right, Hammy, and Berta was wrong, because I remember
your names quite well, y