pitfalls
prepared for them, racking their brains for plans to avert such a
catastrophe, when the very thing they feared took place.

Instead of the familiar figure of Willie Botha coming up the garden
path with news, Mrs. Malan drove up with Jannie Joubert's fiancee,
Miss Malan.

Their appearance at Harmony brought all that had happened most
forcibly to the minds of the stricken inmates, filling them with the
sense of acute loss; and when they heard what their visitors had to
tell, four women more forlorn would have been hard to find.

In short sentences Mrs. Malan told how four young men, all ignorant of
the fate of their fellows in town, had tried to come in from the High
Veld, bearing with them dispatches from Captain Naude to the President
and to the Committee of spies in town.

These men had gone to and fro for months without a single encounter
with outpost or guard, but on this occasion, when they reached the
wire enclosure, they were unexpectedly met by a storm of bullets.

One of them, as he stooped to get through the fence, felt the hot air
of a bullet passing under his nose.

He hastily gave the order to retreat over the "koppies" and across the
railway line, thus entering Pretoria on the opposite side.

When they met again, before entering the town, one of them was
missing!

Young Els had disappeared, and no one knew whether he had been shot or
taken, or whether he had fallen into some hole and perhaps been so
severely injured that he could not follow them. His comrades were in
deep distress. To go back and search for him was impossible, so they
entered the town at the utmost peril of their lives. Torn and
bleeding, they slunk through the streets of Pretoria, avoiding the
light of the electric lamps, and concealing themselves behind trees at
the sight of every man in khaki, until they reached Mrs. Malan's
house.

Their guardian angels must have kept them from going to Mrs. Joubert's
house, as usual, that night.

Imagine their surprise and horror when they heard of the betrayal of
the Committee, for the warning sent out to Skurveberg did not reach
them, they having come from the High Veld.

The news of Jannie's arrest and of Mrs. Joubert's house having been
searched, and now being so closely watched that they could not
possibly take shelter there, came as a crushing blow.

True to her word, Mrs. Malan determined to shelter them that night,
but the house being too dangerous a hiding-place, they