ee Appendix K.

CHAPTER XI.

THE BEGINNING OF THE END.

So the year dragged on with its one little glimmer of light and its
big black clouds of disappointment, and it was Christmas-time when
the spark came to the waiting tinder. What a bloody bill could the
holidays and holy days of the world tot up! On the Sunday night
before Christmas a British subject named Tom Jackson Edgar was shot
dead in his own house by a Boer policeman. Edgar, who was a man of
singularly fine physique and both able and accustomed to take care of
himself, was returning home at about midnight when one of three men
standing by, who as it afterwards transpired was both ill and
intoxicated, made an offensive remark. Edgar resented it with a blow
which dropped the other insensible to the ground. The man's friends
called for the police and Edgar, meanwhile, entered his own house a
few yards off. There was no attempt at concealment or escape; Edgar
was an old resident and perfectly well known. Four policemen came,
who in any circumstances were surely sufficient to capture him.
Moreover, if that had been considered difficult, other assistance
could have been obtained and the house from which there could have
been no escape might have been watched. In any case Edgar was
admitted by the police to have sat on the bed talking to his wife,
and to have been thus watched by them through the window. It is not
stated that they called upon him to come out or surrender himself,
but they proceeded immediately to burst in his door. Hearing the
noise he came out into the passage. He may or may not have known that
they were police: he may or may not have believed them to be the
three men by one of whom he had been insulted. There is not a word of
truth in the statement since made that Edgar had been drinking. It
was not alleged even in defence of the police, and the post-mortem
examination showed that it was not so. A Boer policeman named
Jones (There are scores of Boers unable to speak a word of
English, who nevertheless own very characteristic English, Scotch,
and Irish names--many of them being children of deserters from the
British army!) revolver in hand burst the door open. It is alleged
by the prisoner and one of the police that as the door was burst
open, Edgar from the passage struck the constable on the head
twice with an iron-shod stick which was afterwards produced
in Court. On the other hand Mrs. Edgar and other independent
witnesses--spectat