Though French’s Cavalry had been at the farm a day before me and ransacked the Veldt-Cornet’s deserted house, in search of any documents that might have been left there, ducks were swimming in a pond close by and fowls cackling about the sheds from which some Kaffirs presently appeared. To my request, for bread or eggs or milk they had but one answer, ‘Ikona.’ The sight of a loaded revolver might have produced some effect, but, having none, I dismounted and made a systematic search. If food in any shape was there it must have been very cleverly hidden. Finding not so much as a bundle of oat-hay for my horse to nibble at, I rode on across ridge and hollow another five miles or so, and then came upon a little dorp or hamlet, from which all the inhabitants except a Dutch schoolmaster and his wife had disappeared. They declared that not a scrap of food had been left behind. But the good vrau gave me a cup of excellent coffee, and with thanks for the best of hospitality, which gives all it can, I jogged along another league or two, following the straight road towards Johannesburg and expecting every minute to fall in with the rearguard of a column going that way. All the while I had not seen a single soldier or the trace of an iron-shod hoof that was not at least a day old. The unmistakable marks of ‘ammunition’ boots were not there, and neither horse nor man had left footprints on tracks where the morning’s thaw had softened them. At last from a rugged ridge I saw smoke curling up from houses among the trees that marked the course of a river some two miles ahead. Not caring much by that time whether Britons or Boers might be in those houses, I rode straight for the nearest of them, which turned out to be a farm in the barn of which I saw much forage.