The last two days in each week he had to himself, and with three or four
lads of his own age went for long rides in search of sport. A couple of
hours every evening were spent in study under his father's direction. He
was quiet in manner, and talked but little. He deeply resented the
position in which the British population in the Transvaal were placed,
the insolence of the Boers towards them, and their brutal cruelty
towards the natives. The restraint which he so often found it necessary
to exercise had had no slight influence on his character, and had given
a certain grim expression to the naturally bright face. Many had been
the discussions between him and his friends as to the prospect of
England's taking up their cause. Their disappointment had been intense
at the miserable failure of the Jameson raid, which, however, they felt,
and rightly, must some day have a good result, inasmuch as it had
brought out the wretched position of the Uitlanders, who, though forming
the majority of the population, and the source of all the wealth of the
country, and paying all the taxes, were yet treated as an outcast race,
and deprived of every right possessed by people of all civilized
nations.

They had wondered and fretted at the apathy with which the enormous
warlike preparations of the Boers were regarded at home, and the fact
that they were permitted to become a formidable power, capable of
offering a desperate resistance even by the armies of England; whereas,
before they had been enriched by the industry and enterprise of the
immigrants, they had been in danger of being altogether wiped out by the
Zulus and Swazis, and had only been saved by the interference on their
behalf of the British power. Thus, then, while the war-cloud had been
slowly but surely gathering, the lads had watched the approaching crisis
with delight, unmingled with the anxiety and foreboding of the
capitalists, who, without doubting what the end must be, were sure that