ten-minutes' exercise in
the prison-yard every morning; and, on comparing notes afterwards,
they found that they had been subjected to the same treatment
undergone by the unfortunate men who had turned King's evidence and
who had been the cause of their undoing. To some of them the death
sentence was read at night, with a promise of pardon if they betrayed
the names of their fellow-conspirators in town, and sometimes they
were visited in their cells by officers who informed them that one or
other of their fellow-prisoners had "given away the show."

"You may safely speak out now, for we know everything. So-and-so has
turned King's evidence." But these brave men saw through the ruse,
and steadfastly refused to sell their honour for their lives. With
one accord they answered, "So-and-so may have given you information,
but _I_ know nothing."

They were subjected to severe treatment, half-starved, threatened,
told that they were condemned to death, and then severely left alone
with the sword hanging over their heads--to no avail. Not a word of
information was wrung from them, no murmur of complaint crossed their
lips.

This lasted sixteen days, and during that time they suffered
intensely, the food being unfit for consumption and their surroundings
filthy beyond words. As I have said before, there were among their
number men physically unfit for hardships like these.

Mr. Willem Botha was one of them, and as the days dragged on, the
headaches with which he was afflicted became more frequent and
increased in violence.

He feared that he would lose his reason and, in losing it, betray all
to his jailers, and he was consumed with anxiety for his wife.

After the first shock of his arrest, he was suddenly overwhelmed with
the recollection that he had forgotten to destroy the slip of paper on
which the message concerning the Boer traitor in the Free State had
been conveyed to him through a prisoner in the Rest Camp. He tried to
remember what he had done with it, but in vain. Each day found him
torn with anxiety, searching his memory for the threads of
recollection, broken in the stress of the last stirring events before
his arrest. Suddenly one day it flashed across his mind that he had
pushed the slip of paper between the tattered leaves of an old
hymn-book.

Bitterly he reproached himself with his unpardonable negligence. That
slip of paper, containing injunctions to the Committee to convey
information of such a seri