“with red hair” travelling towards the frontier.  The newspapers made so much of the affair that my humble fortunes and my whereabouts were discussed in long columns of print, and even in the crash of the war I became to the Boers a topic all to myself.  The rumours in part amused me.  It was certain, said the “Standard and Diggers’ News,” that I had escaped disguised as a woman.  The next day I was reported captured at Komati Poort dressed as a Transvaal policeman.  There was great delight at this, which was only changed to doubt when other telegrams said that I had been arrested at Brugsbank, at Middelburg, and at Bronkerspruit.  But the captives proved to be harmless people after all.  Finally it was agreed that I had never left Pretoria.  I had—­it appeared—­changed clothes with a waiter, and was now in hiding at the house of some British sympathiser in the capital.  On the strength of this all the houses of suspected persons were searched from top to bottom, and these unfortunate people were, I fear, put to a great deal of inconvenience.  A special commission was also appointed to investigate ‘stringently’ (a most hateful adjective in such a connection) the causes ’which had rendered it possible for the War Correspondent of the “Morning Post” to escape.’

The ‘Volksstem’ noticed as a significant fact that I had recently become a subscriber to the State Library, and had selected Mill’s essay ’On Liberty.’  It apparently desired to gravely deprecate prisoners having access to such inflammatory literature.  The idea will, perhaps, amuse those who have read the work in question.

I find it very difficult in the face of the extraordinary efforts which were made to recapture me, to believe that the Transvaal Government seriously contemplated my release before they knew I had escaped them.  Yet a telegram was swiftly despatched from Pretoria to all the newspapers, setting forth the terms of a most admirable letter, in which General Joubert explained the grounds which prompted him generously to restore my liberty.  I am inclined to think that the Boers hate being beaten even in the smallest things, and always fight on the win, tie, or wrangle principle; but in my case I rejoice I am not beholden to them, and have not thus been disqualified from fighting.

All these things may provoke a smile of indifference, perhaps even of triumph, after the danger is past; but during the days when I was lying up in holes and corners, waiting for a good chance to board a train, the causes that had led to them preyed more than I knew on my nerves.  To be an outcast, to be hunted, to lie under a warrant for arrest, to fear every man, to have imprisonment—­not necessarily military confinement either—­hanging overhead, to fly the light, to doubt the shadows—­all these things ate into my soul and have left an impression that will not perhaps be easily effaced.

On the sixth day the chance I had patiently waited for came.  I found a convenient train duly labelled to Lourenco Marques standing in a siding.  I withdrew to a suitable spot for boarding it—­for I dared not make the attempt in the station—­and, filling a bottle with water to drink on the way, I prepared for the last stage of my journey.