Had he heard it, it would have been intensely
annoying to any Englishman.
"I see that the London Chronicle," he said, "asks if, since I have
become a rebel, I do not lose my rights as a Barrister of the Temple?
Of course, we are no more rebels than the Spaniards were rebels
against the United States. By a great stretch of the truth, under
the suzerainty clause, the burghers of the Transvaal might be called
rebels, but a Free Stater - never! It is not the animosity of the
English which I mind," he added, thoughtfully, "but their depressing
ignorance of their own history."
His cheerfulness and hopefulness, even though one guessed they were
assumed, commanded one's admiration. He was being hunted out of one
village after another, the miles of territory still free to him were
hourly shrinking - in a few days he would be a refugee in the
Transvaal; but he stood in the open veldt with all his possessions in
the cart behind him, a president without a republic, a man without a
home, but still full of pluck, cheerful and unbeaten.
The farm-house of General Andrew Cronje stood just above the drift
and was the only conspicuous mark for the English guns on our side of
the river, so in order to protect it the general had turned it over
to the ambulance corps to be used as a hospital.
