you been
in the hands of the Boers since the war started?"

"Yes, until our troops marched in here a day or two ago."

"H'm. Did they rob you?"

"No."

"Did they ill-treat you--knock you about, and that sort of thing?"

"No."

"Why do you hate them so bitterly, then?"

"Oh, I can't stand a cursed Boer at any price. Thinks he's as good as a
Britisher all the time, and puts on side; and he's a cursed tyrant in his
heart, and would rub us out if he could."

"Yes, the Boer thought himself as good a man as the Britishers he met out
this way," I replied, "and he backed his opinion with his life and his
rifle. Why didn't you do the same if you reckoned yourself a better man?"

"Why should I; don't we pay 'Tommy' to do that for us?"

"Perhaps we do; but, concerning those Boer laagers you have been telling us
about: where, when, and how did you see them; what was the name of the
place; who was the Boer general in command, or the field cornet, or
landdrost? I did not know the Boers gave British refugees the free run of
their war laagers, and I'm interested in the matter, being a scribe myself
and a man of peace. Just give me a few names and dates and facts, will
you?"

"No, I won't," he snarled. "You seem to doubt my word, you do, and I'm as
good a Britisher as you are any day, and you think you can come along and
pump information out of me for nothing; but I'm too fly for that--they
don't breed fools in Yorkshire."

"Well, sir, as it seems to suit your temper," I said as sweetly as I could,
"I'll make it a business proposition. I'll bet you fifty pounds to five you
have never put your head inside a Boer laager in war time in your life. If
you have, just name it and give me a few facts."

The B.R. rose wrathfully and muttered something about it being a d---- good
job for me that I was a wounded man and had one arm in a sling, or he'd
show me a heap of things in the fistic line which I should remember for the
rest of my life; but as I only laughed he slouched off, and now, when we
meet in the street, we pass without speaking. But I got his history, all
the same, from one of the Cape Police, who told me the beggar had refused
to join a volunteer regiment when the war broke out, and had remained the
whole time in a quiet little Boer village as a British refugee, and had not
seen the outside, let alone the inside, of a Boer fighting laager in all
his lying life. Yet such cravens at times help to make history--of a kin