among his countrymen here as a British labour delegate has to organise a
strike. These are among the advantages of a free country, don't you
know?"

"Did you come straight here from your place to-day?" said Mrs Wenlock,
by way of covering the angry growl with which her son had received the
other's words.

"No. I slept at Swaart Jan Grobbelaar's."

"That's the old buck who brought away a lot of British skulls from
Majuba," burst in Frank. "They say he sticks one up at a couple of
hundred yards every Majuba Day, and practises at it until there isn't a
bit left big enough for a bullet to hit."

"He must have brought away about a waggonload of them, then, considering
that Majuba happened eighteen years ago," said Colvin. "But I don't
know that it isn't all a yarn. People will say anything about each
other just now."

"I hear there's a lot of war-talk among the Dutch in the
Wildschutsbergen now, Mr Kershaw," said Mrs Wenlock. "You must hear
it, because you're right in among them all."

"Oh, they talk a good bit about war, but then what do we do? When I was
down at the Port Elizabeth show all the English were busy taking the
Transvaal. It was the same thing along Fish River and Koonap. If two
or three fellows got together on any given farm they were bound to spend
the evening taking the Transvaal. In fact, no Boer could give a shoot
on his place without his English neighbours swearing he was
rifle-practising for the great upheaval. We talk nothing but the war,
but if the Dutchmen do it becomes menace, sedition, and all the rest of
it right away."

Those were the days subsequent to the failure of the Bloemfontein
Conference, and racial feeling was near attaining its highest pitch.
Frank Wenlock, as we have said, got on with his Dutch neighbours more
than passably, which was as well, considering that his English ones were
but few and at long distances apart. But even upon him the curse of a
far-off dissension had fallen. Colvin Kershaw, on the other hand, was a
man of the world, with a well-balanced mind, and somewhat unconventional
withal. He took a judicial view of the situation, and, while
recognising that it had two sides, and that there was a great deal to be
said for both, he distinctly declined to allow any political
considerations to make any difference to the relationship in which he
stood towards his Boer neighbours and their families, with several of
whom he was on very good terms indeed.