alse and abominable charge my rage and
indignation caused me to laugh aloud.

"Are you mad, commandant," I exclaimed, "that you should say such
things? On what evidence is this wicked lie advanced against me?"

"No, Allan Quatermain, I am not mad," he replied, "although it is
true that through your evil doings I, who have lost my wife and three
children by the Zulu spears, have suffered enough to make me mad. As for
the evidence against you, you shall hear it. But first I will write down
that you plead Not guilty."

He did so, then said:

"If you will acknowledge certain things it will save us all much time,
of which at present we have little to spare. Those things are that
knowing what was going to happen to the commission, you tried to avoid
accompanying it. Is that true?"

"No," I answered. "I knew nothing of what was going to happen to the
commission, though I feared something, having but just saved my friends
there"--and I pointed to the Prinsloos--"from death at the hands of
Dingaan. I did not wish to accompany it for another reason: that I had
been married on the day of its starting to Marie Marais. Still, I went
after all because the General Retief, who was my friend, asked me to
come, to interpret for him."

Now some of the Boers present said:

"That is true. We remember."

But the commandant continued, taking no heed of my answer or these
interruptions.

"Do you acknowledge that you were on bad terms with Henri Marais and
with Hernan Pereira?"

"Yes," I answered; "because Henri Marais did all in his power to prevent
my marriage with his daughter Marie, behaving very ill to me who had
saved his life and that of his people who remained to him up by Delagoa,
and afterwards at Umgungundhlovu. Because, too, Hernan Pereira strove to
rob me of Marie, who loved me. Moreover, although I had saved him when
he lay sick to death, he afterwards tried to murder me by shooting
me down in a lonely place. Here is the mark of it," and I touched the
little scar upon the side of my forehead.

"That is true; he did so, the stinkcat," shouted the Vrouw Prinsloo, and
was ordered to be silent.

"Do you acknowledge," went on the commandant, "that you sent to warn
your wife and those with her to depart from the camp on the Bushman's
River, because it was going to be attacked, charging them to keep the
matter secret, and that afterwards both you and your Hottentot servant
alone returned safely from Zululand, where all th