The fire had gone out of the old man’s eye. Fire at ninety-two is not constant, and old _Tanta_ coming to say supper was ready clinched the situation. After supper Hermanus read the word of God from the Second Book of Kings out of the great Bible, and poor old Schwartz was taken to bed to hear more for his pains. Julie was a strategist and an advocate. Next morning early, before dawn, after the simple wont of the simple Dutch, the songs of David in simple point swelled in the morning air, and the quavering voice of old Schwartz led the chaunt. It was the glorious words of the _Dominus Regnavit_, and it suited the donning of khaki and the old man’s surrender. ‘The Lord is King, and hath put on glorious apparel and girded Himself with strength.... ‘The waves of the sea are mighty, and rage horribly, but yet the Lord who dwelleth on high is mightier.’ As the sun glinted under the _stoep_, old Schwartz was being shown the glories of a Mark VII rifle, and the merits of the pointed bullet, while the horses were saddling in the _kraal_. Later, as Commandant Delarey marched off his commando, rifles on hip in due and ancient form, it was Julie who waved a Union flag and a tricolour, while old Schwartz stood on the _stoep_ and gave his blessing from the Book: ‘In courage keep your heart In strength lift up your hand.’ FOOTNOTES [6] Justice of the Peace. _COINCIDENCES._ BY SIR LAURENCE GOMME. A few weeks ago some remarkable examples of coincidences were recorded in the newspapers. They were the actual experiences of the writers, or the guaranteed experiences of relatives or intimate friends. Their genuineness cannot be called in question. But they are all isolated examples, each of them being communicated by different correspondents. Even as such they were sufficiently remarkable to make it worth while to ask whether coincidences in the order of things human play a definite part in life’s drama, in the science of life perhaps one ought to say, or whether they are so accidental and non-influential as to have no bearing upon the problems of life. If they have a bearing on the unexplored meanings of human action, they seem to me to belong to individual, and not to social, man. They might explain the individual action of Julius Caesar, Napoleon, and the great ones of the world; they might be one of the influences which have apparently made individual men rulers of human destiny for a time. But to prove any such theory as this, even if it be a possible theory at all, one must deal, not with single examples of coincidences which occur to different people, but with a series of examples which have happened to one individual. The comparative study of coincidences in separate lives would, it occurs to me, be not only scientifically valuable, but of intense interest to all who are fond of reading the lives of men who have made a mark in the world.