great minds rise superior to such difficulties, and so did
the "committee," or some of them, or one of them. If they could not
get genuine signatures to their petitions, they could at any rate
manufacture them. This great idea once hit out, so vigorously was it
prosecuted that they, or some of them, or one of them, produced in a
very little while no less than 3883 signatures, of which sixteen were
proved to be genuine, five were doubtful, and all the rest fictitious.
But the gentleman, whoever he was, who was the working partner in the
scheme--and I may state, by way of parenthesis, that when Gunn of Gunn
was subsequently arrested, petitions in process of signature were found
under the mattress of his bed--calculated without his host. He either
did not know, or had forgotten, that on receipt of such documents by a
superior officer, they are at once sent to the officer accused to report
upon. This course was followed in the present case, and the petitions
were discovered to be gross impostures. The ingenuity exercised by their
author or authors was really very remarkable, for it must be remembered
that not one of the signatures was forged; they were all invented, and
had, of course, to be written in a great variety of hands. The plan
generally pursued was to put down the names of people living in the
country, with slight variations. Thus "De _V_illiers" became "De
_W_illiers," and "Van Z_y_l" "Van Z_u_l." I remember that my own name
appeared on one of the petitions with some slight alteration. Some of
the names were evidently meant to be facetious. Thus there was a "Jan
Verneuker," which means "John the Cheat."

Of the persons directly or indirectly concerned in this rascally plot,
the unfortunate Colonel Weatherly subsequently apologised to Sir T.
Shepstone for his share in the agitation, and shortly afterwards died
fighting bravely on Kambula. Captain Gunn of Gunn and Mrs. Weatherley,
after having given rise to the most remarkable divorce case I ever
heard,--it took fourteen days to try--were, on the death of Colonel
Weatherley, united in the bonds of holy matrimony, and are, I believe,
still in Pretoria. The lawyer vanished I know not where, whilst Mr.
Celliers still continues to edit that admirably conducted journal the
"Volkstem;" nor, if I may judge from the report of a speech made by
him recently at a Boer festival, which, by the way, was graced by the
presence of our representative, Mr. Hudson, the British Residen