he commandos.

One man in town was in the habit of receiving great batches of these
smuggled letters, which he distributed to the various addresses, until
one day he was very nearly caught. He had just received a packet of
communications "from the front" and had opened it on his writing-table
in his quiet study, when the doors were opened unceremoniously and
some officials entered with a warrant to search his house. Carpets
were taken up, walls were tapped, furniture was overturned and
examined, books were removed from their shelves and every cranny
inspected with the greatest thoroughness, but the pile of letters
lying open on his writing-table, over which they had found him bending
when they entered the room, was passed over without so much as a
glance.

This may sound a bit unreal, unlikely, but there are similar cases on
record, which we know to be true beyond a doubt, and one of these I
must relate, because it so closely concerned our friends at Harmony
and so very nearly proved to be their undoing. They did not know it at
the time, but were told by Mrs. Cloete, after the war, that she had
sent all their uncensored, their "smuggled" letters, to her friend at
Capetown, Mrs. Koopmans de Wet, with instructions to read and return
them to her as soon as possible, which Mrs. Koopmans had done, with
the alarming news that her house had been thoroughly searched for
documents while the pile of letters was lying open on her
writing-table.

The authorities must have been "struck blind," she had said, for
though they had overhauled the place and had taken away with them
every suspicious-looking document, they had passed and repassed the
papers on her table without a word and with nothing more than a
superficial glance.

This information had alarmed Mrs. Cloete so much that she had
immediately packed every incriminating letter and all her White
Envelopes into a tin, which she secretly buried, with the help of her
German nurse, under one of the trees at Alphen.

And there they, or what is left of them after ten years, still lie,
for the spot has never again been found, although every effort was
made to do so.

CHAPTER XXXI

"TEA FOR TWO"

It was at the time when the northern territories were being swept by
the enemy for the first time that Mrs. van Warmelo heard that a
relative of hers had been put over the border, and was staying with
her husband at the Grand Hotel in Pretoria.

She therefore asked Hansie