lled with so much smoke that I could hardly breathe, and it
was littered with papers and cups and plates. They wanted me to sit
down and chat with them."

"I am surprised you did not," her mother retorted.

"Well, you see, I had no lamp and I was afraid I should be arrested,
and besides, you would have been terrified to death, thinking I was in
the hands of the English with that precious time-table."

CHAPTER XXIII

SYSTEM EMPLOYED BY THE SECRET COMMITTEE

Mr. Willem Bosch, a cripple, unable to take active work upon himself,
acted as Secretary to the Committee, Mr. Els was old and infirm, and
Mr. Botha, as we have heard, had been struck by lightning and was
frequently prostrate with headaches of an intensely severe nature.

But for these infirmities these men would have been on commando with
their brother burghers.

The wider circle of conspirators consisted of ten or twelve men and
women, who carried out the instructions of the Committee, but in no
case attended their meetings or conferred with them in the presence of
the spies from the field.

Their work chiefly consisted in finding out men anxious to escape from
town and ignorant of the way to go about it--an exceedingly difficult
and dangerous task, with so many National Scouts and other traitors in
their midst.

In order to protect themselves from the danger of being led into a
trap, the following precautions were taken by the Committee and
strictly carried out by their fellow-workers:

When a man was found anxious to join the Boers, he was instructed,
under the most binding injunctions to secrecy, to keep himself in
readiness to depart at a given moment, on the shortest possible
notice. The arrival of an escort from commando was then awaited.

They did not have long to wait, as two or three times a week, without
fail, a small escort of armed men was to be found at a certain spot in
the vicinity of the capital, while one of their number was sent into
town to inform the Committee of the fact.

The fugitive was then instructed to walk slowly in a certain street,
from one point to another at a given hour. Here he was met by a man
unknown to him, usually one of the four, who signed to him to follow
him.

He was not allowed to speak to or follow his leader too closely. It
was not known to him beforehand whether his destination lay north,
south, east, or west. He had but to follow and to find himself, as
darkness fell, in the hands of the armed b