An untimely sea-bath brought back most serious symptoms to my patient, and I was the prey every afternoon to a low fever which sapped my strength. Although at first this fever bore a horrible menace, it proved a disguised blessing. For two or three hours each day I was absolutely free of care, and would lie with quick pulse and mildly intoxicated brain dreaming I was with my elder boy on the border of England. I saw him in his little Eton jacket and broad turned-down collar, his sweet young face fresh as the morning. Or I would dream of the pretty home under the hill, in far-off California. The fragrance of thick beds of violets would seem to float to me over the long waste of sea, and I could see the tall roses nodding in the white summer fog. My temples beat like the winter rain on the roof, and the light before my eyes was the library fire, picking out, in its old familiar way, the gilt lettering on the books ranged about. It was sweet to go back to all this, even down the scorching path of fever. Our stay at Cape Town was coming to its close. The first trial was called for April 24, and my husband insisted upon going back to meet his sentence. Drs. Thomas and Scholtz declared this most unadvisable. His heart was in such condition, any shock might prove fatal. Their reports were forwarded to the Transvaal Government, and I begged for a few days' reprieve, cabling my urgent request to Mr. Olney in Washington, Dr. Coster at Pretoria, and our faithful friend, Mr. Robert Chapin, United States Consul at Johannesburg. Mr. Olney _at once_ petitioned the Boer Government in our behalf. Dr. Coster answered curtly by wiring Mr. Chapin that John Hays Hammond was summoned to appear before the High Court of the Transvaal on the morning of April 24, at 10 o'clock. To me he vouchsafed no word. Letters came from friends in Johannesburg begging my husband not to return, and cables from the United States to the same effect. The sentence was sure to be a death sentence or a term of long imprisonment. From important sources, which for obvious reasons I cannot quote, I received private messages and letters informing of a plan on foot to lynch the leaders. The beam from which four Boers had been hung years before at Schlaagter's Nek (Oh! that poisonous suggestion in the 'Volksstem') had already been brought from the Colony for this special purpose. Mr. Manion, the Consular Agent, and Mr. K.B. Brown, an American just arrived in Cape Town from the Rand, took me aside and laid the case in all its bare brutality before me. _To allow my husband to return to Pretoria was for him to meet certain death_. If he were not lynched by the excited Boers, he was sure to get a death sentence. Mr. Brown showed feeling as he plead with me to use a wife's influence to save her husband's life. My head was swimming. I could only repeat in a dull, dogged way: 'He says his honour takes him back. He is the father of my sons, and I'd rather see him dead than dishonoured.'