A strange guttural and gurgling sound growled out, and drew their wondering looks from the portrait to the man himself. President Kruger was speaking; at least, they supposed that loud and deep mouthful of explosive gutturals and gurglings was his mode of expressing himself. It must have been an order, for as they glanced round, they noticed the guards quitting the apartment, and found themselves alone with the monster and his secretary or interpreter. He was looking at them from under his sullen, pent brows, with ice-cold, piggish eyes that made them shiver again in spite of their efforts to appear brave. He was so horribly ugly, so revoltingly animal-like, and so utterly unsympathetic, that they instinctively recoiled before him. He grinned ogreishly as he observed this step backward, and taking his pipe in his huge, hairless, flabby hand, he puffed out a volume of smoke and expectorated loudly into the spittoon. Then he resumed his pipe, and leaned back in his chair, still watching them intently. He had awed them, and he was evidently delighted with the effect which he had produced, for he chuckled hoarsely as he sent out another huge volume of smoke from his wide mouth. That grim chuckle, with the undertaker-like costume and vulgar deportment of the animal, undid the first effect of his savage glare. The boys looked again, and saw only an unmannerly, brutal, and hog-like old man, with the ugliest face they had ever seen; with elephantine proportions and shapeless great feet, filling out a gimcrack crimson chair, while his fat, coarse hands gripped the sides. His portrait had not flattered him, yet it was distinctly like him, with all its artistic faults. The narrowness and dense ignorance were all there in both picture and sitter, so also the intolerance, obstinacy, and brutality painfully pronounced with his greed, cunning, and plebeian meanness. He was the same sort of Boer as those that they had seen on the farms ill-treating their servants and cattle, the same superstitious and rude dopper who read his Bible and doggedly shut out charity from his heart. All the rudeness, filthy habits, and moroseness of his race were here in unbending and irredeemable force, carved and cemented by age and habit into the hardness of cast iron. They were no longer appalled by his ugliness; instead, they were looking at him with undisguised loathing and contempt. Was this the man who had hoodwinked men of intellect--this low-bred, stupid, and surly beast, whose only qualities were vindictive hatred and ignorant, stupid conceit and arrogance? Surely he could deceive no one who stood face to face with him, for that countenance was an open index of all the mean vices which make men abhorred and despised? He looked and acted as if his proper place was amongst hod-carriers, not politicians.