ossible thing.
However have you managed to get here? My letter can only have reached
you on the 9th at the earliest, and here you are at dawn on the 12th.
But come in, my lad; you must be tired out, and will want a good sleep."

"Yes, I am a little done up," Jack admitted. "I have been riding ever
since dusk yesterday, and did the same for two whole nights before that.
I have ridden every inch of the way from Kimberley, through Hoopstad
and Reitzburg, and my legs and back are so stiff that I can scarcely
move them. I think I'll have a hot bath if I can get one, and then get
Tom Thumb to rub me down with oil. A good tuck-in and a small nip of
brandy will set me up again, and after a few hours' sleep I shall be fit
to start for the border."

Accordingly Jack jumped into a hot bath, and was well rubbed with oil.
After that he partook of a good meal and at once turned in between
beautifully-clean sheets, to which, down Kimberley way, he had been a
total stranger, except when he and Tom returned from one of their
expeditions.

Almost before his head was on the pillow he was fast asleep, and when he
woke again, feeling wonderfully refreshed, it was already getting dusk.

"Ah, there you are!" cried Mr Hunter with satisfaction, when he made
his appearance in the dining-room. "Now I will tell you what has
happened since the ultimatum, and indeed since war became a certainty.
On October let the governments at Pretoria and Bloemfontein called up
their burghers, and since then our streets have been filled with men,
all on their way to the front, armed and supplied with ammunition, and
trusting to an iniquitous system of commandeering to obtain other
necessaries. No one's property has been safe, and we in Johannesburg
have suffered, I believe, more heavily than any others. My store has
been practically denuded of its contents, so that I now congratulate
myself on having cancelled all expected consignments of goods from
Durban for the past three months, and having cleared all goods remaining
here as rapidly as possible. Some of my friends have not been so
fortunate, and have lost everything valuable to men about to embark in a
campaign. Horses have been seized everywhere, and there again I have
been wise in time. Two weeks ago I sent over the four-wheeled cart and
four good horses to Ted Ellison's farm, ten miles out from here. They
will be perfectly safe there, for Ted married a Boer girl five years
ago, and she is a