He took frequent walks out amongst the various commandos, and made many friends amongst the Burghers, unknown to him up to now. He found them, unless excited by remarks of recent events, in a happy and frolicsome mood. ‘Just like a troop of happy children out for a holiday,’ as he remarked to a friend. The Burgher out on commando is always full of fun and frolic when off duty or guard. Various games of skill and strength are indulged in during the day, while the evenings are spent in reminiscences of the past: stories of Kaffir campaigns, of the war against England, and of the hunting field, passes round. The younger men would sit and listen attentively and respectfully as their elders related adventures, dangers and difficulties experienced during the early years of the _voortrekkers_. The old men would feel young again as they told of the dangers of the chase; of how they hunted the elephant, the lion, the buffalo, the rhinoceros, in the days when such game roamed the country in plenty, and could be found almost without searching for. How the young men regretted their ill-fortune, which caused them to be born too late to participate in such stirring times. How they wished that they might have lived fifty years ago instead of in these tame, prosaic days, when one had to take a three months’ journey to see a rhinoceros or a lion, and when an elephant could only be seen in a circus show. * * * * * It is Monday night, 6th of January 1896. It is the night when the great National Union meeting should have been held under the chairmanship of Charles Leonard. The meeting is being held, but only a committee meeting; but alas and alack Charles Leonard is not here to take the chair. Charles Leonard is in Cape Town. Poor Charles Leonard. The body may have been willing, but the heart was _too_ faint. Such is ever the fate of braggarts. While danger is yet far away, great deeds are talked of--then the braggart is a hero; and, alas for human credulity, the braggart will always find those who will believe in him. It is not everybody who can read the heart of man in his face, or from his tongue, and, least of all, the _public_. How easily the PUBLIC--the _people_--as a whole, will allow a boasting, a glib-tongued, plausible braggart to lead them by the nose. How disgusting it is for a student of human nature to see a man thus lead a crowd of credulous people to believe in him, to make a hero of him, to accept his statements for gospel, and all because the man has a plausible appearance and can TALK. Johannesburg for a time believed in Charles Leonard! Now the National Union Committee, self-styled _Reform Committee_, by others called the _deformed_ Committee, was holding a meeting--to do what? To decide upon what they should do in reply to President Kruger’s ultimatum, in which they were given twenty-four hours to lay down their arms and surrender unconditionally.