They have only two styles of roofing their dwellings—­either the old-fashioned gable roof, or the still older kind of “lean-to,” the latter being nothing but a flat top, high at the front and running lower towards the back, in order that the rain water may carry off rapidly.  They paint their doors and windows a sober reddish brown, for your true Boer has an utter contempt for anything gaudy or gay.  He leaves that sort of thing to his nigger servants, who make up for their master’s lack of appreciation in the matter of colour by rigging themselves out in anything that is startling in the way of contrasts, for if the white master is a Puritan in such things, the nigger servant, male and female, is a perfect sybarite.

Right opposite where I am sitting a family group, or all that is left of the family, is sitting, as the custom is at evening, out on the stoep.  On the side nearest me is a young widow.  I have made inquiries concerning her.  Her husband was killed fighting against our troops at Graspan.  She, poor thing, is dressed in deepest mourning.  Her dress is made of some heavy black material, and has no touch of white or any colour anywhere to relieve its sombre shades.  On her head she wears a jet black cap, which rises high and wide, and falls around her neck and shoulders.  The cap is fashioned much after the style of the sun bonnets worn by the peasant women of Normandy, but hers is black, black as the grave.  She has rather a nice face, a good woman’s face, pale and refined by suffering.  No one looking at her can doubt that she has suffered, and suffered as only such women can, through this brutal, bloody war.  I thought of the widows away in our own land as I looked at her sitting there, so silently and sadly, with her thin white hands clasped on the black folds of her lap.  On one hand I plainly saw the gold circle shining, which a few months ago had meant so much to her; now, alas! only the outward and visible sign of all she had been and of all that she had lost.  Behind her the snow-white wall of the house, sparkling in the red rays of the setting sun; at her feet only the white slate of the stoep.  And well enough I knew that under the proud Empire flag many a widow as young and as heart-broken as this Dutch girl would watch the sun go down as hopelessly as she, and I could not help the thought which sprang to my soul—­God’s bitter curse rest on the head of the man, be he Boer or Briton, who brought about this cruel war.

On the street in front of the house where the widow sat I noticed a group of niggers.  Some of them were merely local “boys,” who worked for the townspeople.  They were dressed in the usual nigger fashion, in old store clothing, patched or ventilated according to the wearer’s taste.  One fellow had on a pair of pants that had at some former stage belonged to a man about four times his size.  The portion of those pants which is usually hidden when a man is sitting in the saddle had been