that he has tried often and often to stir up the Boers against him.
Old Hans Coetzee told me that he denounced him to the Veld-Cornet as
an _uitlander_ and a _verdomde Engelsmann_ about two years before the
annexation, and tried to get him to persuade the Landrost to report him
as a law-breaker to the Raad; while all the time he was pretending to
be so friendly. Then in the Sikukuni war it was Frank Muller who caused
them to commandeer uncle's two best waggons and spans. He gave none
himself, nothing but a couple of bags of meal. He is a wicked fellow,
Bessie, and a dangerous fellow; but he has more brains and more power
about him than any man in the Transvaal, and you will have to be very
careful, or he will do us all a bad turn."

"Ah!" said Bessie; "well, he can't do much now that the country is
English."

"I am not so sure of that. I am not so sure that the country is going
to stop English. You laugh at me for reading the home papers, but I see
things there that make me doubtful. The other party is in power now in
England, and one does not know what they may do; you heard what uncle
said to-night. They might give us up to the Boers. You must remember
that we far-away people are only the counters with which they play their
game."

"Nonsense, Jess," said Bessie indignantly. "Englishmen are not like
that. When they say a thing, they stick to it."

"They used to, you mean," answered Jess with a shrug, and got up from
her chair to go to bed.

Bessie began to fidget her white feet over one another.