agitations" in the Camp,
her stormy interviews with the Commandant, her hopeless struggles
against disease and death.

If ever a Concentration Camp was mismanaged, Irene was, and the six
volunteer nurses, not being paid servants, but having taken up their
work for love and at no small sacrifice to themselves, left no stone
unturned to bring about the necessary improvements.

How futile their poor little efforts were! How powerless they found
themselves against the tide of wilful misunderstanding, deliberate
neglect, unpardonable mismanagement!

The number of deaths in the Camps increased every day, and Hansie,
wiping the hoar-frost from her hair when she woke, half-frozen, in her
tent, wondered how many of her little patients had been mercifully
released by death that night.

For always, when she resumed her work, there were _childish_ forms
stretched out in their last sleep.

One morning, when she found that there had been five deaths during the
night, in her ward alone, she took the train to Pretoria, straight to
General Maxwell's office.

"Come and see for yourself, General. The people are starving, and they
lie on the cold ground with little or no covering. Fuel they have
nothing to speak of, medical comforts are always out of stock----"

With a heavy frown he asked:

"Why are these things not reported to me?"

"I don't know," she answered miserably. "We thought you knew. We can
do nothing with the Commandant----"

A great deal more was said on both sides, revelations, not to be
repeated here, made by the unhappy girl, and the Governor's
sympathetic face grew stern with righteous indignation as she
proceeded.

"I will investigate the matter for myself," he said. "But you look
ill--why don't you come home and take a good rest?"

"I am only sick with misery, General; but if you will speak to the
Commandant and insist on better management in the Camp, we may still
be able to save a great many lives. There is no time to lose. If the
people are not provided with better food and warmer covering during
this intensely cold weather, the mortality will be something appalling
next month."

A few days later, one beautifully crisp and clear Sunday morning,
General Maxwell and his A.D.C., Major Hoskins, rode over to Irene to
pay the Camp a surprise visit--and a "surprise" it must have been
indeed, of no pleasant nature, to the Commandant, judging by his black
looks afterwards.

The General asked to see Miss va