s the
dancing-hall of a hotel and his roof-tree the hood of a Cape cart. He
stood in the middle of the road, and talked hopefully of the morrow. He
had been waiting, he said, to see the development of the enemy's attack,
but the British had not appeared, and, as he believed they would not
advance that day, he was going on to the bridge to talk to his burghers
and to consult with General Botha. He was much more a man of the world
and more the professional politician than President Kruger. I use the
words "professional politician" in no unpleasant sense, but meaning
rather that he was ready, tactful, and diplomatic. For instance, he gave
to whatever he said the air of a confidence reserved especially for the
ear of the person to whom he spoke. He showed none of the bitterness
which President Kruger exhibits toward the British, but took the tone
toward the English Government of the most critical and mused tolerance.
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."

[Picture: President Steyn on his way to Sand River battle]

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. They had lashed a great Red
Cross flag to the chimney and filled the clean shelves of the generously
built kitchen with bottles of antiseptics and bitter-smell