H'm; I knew the class of animal well--general jackal; do the dirty work of any trade, and master of none. "Where were you when the war broke out?" He scowled savagely: "Johannesburg." "Have the same hatred for the Boers before the war as you have now?" "Yes." "Why didn't you pick up a rifle and have a hand in the fighting?" "I'm not a blessed 'Tommy,' sir! Do you take me for a d---- 'Tommy,' sir?" "No; oh, no, I assure you I did nothing of the kind. But--er, have you been in the hands of the Boers since the war started?" "Yes, until our troops marched in here a day or two ago." "H'm. Did they rob you?" "No." "Did they ill-treat you--knock you about, and that sort of thing?" "No." "Why do you hate them so bitterly, then?" "Oh, I can't stand a cursed Boer at any price. Thinks he's as good as a Britisher all the time, and puts on side; and he's a cursed tyrant in his heart, and would rub us out if he could." "Yes, the Boer thought himself as good a man as the Britishers he met out this way," I replied, "and he backed his opinion with his life and his rifle. Why didn't you do the same if you reckoned yourself a better man?" "Why should I; don't we pay 'Tommy' to do that for us?" "Perhaps we do; but, concerning those Boer laagers you have been telling us about: where, when, and how did you see them; what was the name of the place; who was the Boer general in command, or the field cornet, or landdrost? I did not know the Boers gave British refugees the free run of their war laagers, and I'm interested in the matter, being a scribe myself and a man of peace. Just give me a few names and dates and facts, will you?" "No, I won't," he snarled. "You seem to doubt my word, you do, and I'm as good a Britisher as you are any day, and you think you can come along and pump information out of me for nothing; but I'm too fly for that--they don't breed fools in Yorkshire." "Well, sir, as it seems to suit your temper," I said as sweetly as I could, "I'll make it a business proposition. I'll bet you fifty pounds to five you have never put your head inside a Boer laager in war time in your life. If you have, just name it and give me a few facts." The B.R. rose wrathfully and muttered something about it being a d---- good job for me that I was a wounded man and had one arm in a sling, or he'd show me a heap of things in the fistic line which I should remember for the rest of my life; but as I only laughed he slouched off, and now, when we meet in the street, we pass without speaking. But I got his history, all the same, from one of the Cape Police, who told me the beggar had refused to join a volunteer regiment when the war broke out, and had remained the whole time in a quiet little Boer village as a British refugee, and had not seen the outside, let alone the inside, of a Boer fighting laager in all his lying life. Yet such cravens at times help to make history--of a kind.