rovost-Marshal, saying that "the
present regulations do not allow burghers or their families to leave
South Africa."

Hansie wrote to Lord Kitchener, but received no reply, and it was
nearly the middle of May, after some weeks of uncertainty, harder far
to bear than trouble of a more decided character, when she and Mrs.
Cloete left the capital for Cape Colony.

Hansie's last words in her diary are:

"There is quite a history connected with the procuring of my permits,
which I shall relate another time. _I am too tired now._"

Words significant of what the girl had endured in parting from her
mother and leaving her beloved country at a time so critical!

* * * * *

On an ocean-steamer she found herself at last--alone, for in that
crowd there was no face familiar to her to be seen.

She mixed freely with the crowd; she sought, in the games with which
these voyages usually are passed, to forget--to forget; but the nights
of sleeplessness remained--her waking terror, with which she was
consumed.

Two men there were who proved sympathetic, one a Scotchman, the other
an Englishman--both anti-Boer and sadly misinformed when first she met
them, both "converts" by the time they reached their native shores.

Sitting at table she listened intently to the conversations on the
war--the war, the never-ending war. On no occasion did she breathe a
word of what _she_ knew, of what _she_ felt, until one day at dinner
a young English lieutenant, "covered with glory" and returning home a
hero of the war, enlarged on the services rendered by one brave
officer, well known by name to Hansie.

"It is not only what he achieved with so much success in the field,"
he continued. "I am thinking now of those two years he spent in the
Pretoria Forts _before_ the war, as a common labourer, doing menial
work with other men, and secretly making plans and drawing charts of
the Pretoria fortifications. Every detail was made known to our
military before we went to war."

Exclamations of surprise, a murmur of admiration, ran along the table.

Hansie waited until there was a lull, and then she asked:

"The work carried out by him, was it done under oath of allegiance to
the Transvaal Government?"

There was one moment's painful silence before the young lieutenant
answered, with a laugh:

"Of course; it could not possibly have been done otherwise--but all is
fair in love and war."

"War?" Hansie exclaimed--"