her back upon the liar....

"So, then, you are not willing to go back in a veld waggon?" demanded the
bullying voice.

"I'm willing to go back in anything that isn't a coffin," she declared.

He gave the wooden chuckle, swung about and trampled to the door, calling
to Van Busch in the tone of a dog's master:

"Here, you ...!"

Van Busch followed, wriggling as obsequiously as the dog with a stolen
mutton-chop upon his conscience. The door slammed, the key turned roughly
in the lock. Lady Hannah, oblivious of the absence of outdoor footwear,
flew joyously to cram a few belongings into her travelling-bag and resume
her discarded hat.

Outside in the street, the motley crowd having melted away upon his
appearance, General Selig Brounckers was saying to Van Busch:

"It is a pity that the Engelschwoman's story was not true about that mare
and spider. For if a mare and spider there had been, you might perhaps
have kept them for your trouble----"

--"Now I come to think of it, Myjnheer Commandant," said Van Busch in a
hurry, "perhaps the woman was not lying, after all. Bough has a
mouse-coloured trotter in the stables at Haargrond Plaats, and a spider
stands under the waggon-shed in the yard. If they are hers, I'll let Bough
know Myjnheer Commandant said I was to have them. He'll make no bones
about parting then. Sure, no! he'll never dare to."

"I will send a couple of my burghers with you to take care he does not,"
said the Commandant, in what was for the redoubtable Brounckers an easy
tone. "It is unlucky," he added less pleasantly, "that you were such a
verdoemte clever knave as to tell the Engelschwoman I had commandeered
both beast and vehicle for Republics' use. Because now I will do it, look
you! No Boer's son that lives, by the Lord! will I suffer to make Selig
Brounckers out a liar." He added, as Van Busch salaamed and squirmed with
more than Oriental submissiveness, "Least of all a sneaking Africander
schelm like you. And now, about the money?"

"Excellentie----" lisped Van Busch, smiling his oily brown face into
ingratiating creases ...

"I am no Excellentie.... Of how much money, properly belonging to the
Republics' war-chest, have you cheated this little fool of an
Engelschwoman?"

"Five weeks back, Myjnheer Commandant," bleated Van Busch, "I had from her
one hundred and fifty pounds, which I swear as an honest man has been
handed over to Myjnheer Blinders----"

"He has accounted to me."