About this time the Boers in Pretoria were also making merry over an incident associated with countersigns in which one who played a sentry’s part had the laugh on his side at the expense of British officers. It happened at a crisis when Botha was known to have secret emissaries in the capital warning him of every preparation for a fresh movement, and it illustrates perfectly the aptitude of Boers as spies, and the easy-going inefficiency of our own precaution against traitors. A young Boer, speaking English fluently, came from Botha’s force just after Lord Roberts was supposed to have dispersed it in the neighbourhood of Diamond Hill. He reached our outposts not far from the limits patrolled by Lumsden’s Horse, and, being armed with one of the passes that have been lavishly distributed and frequently abused, he had no difficulty in getting through the British lines. Once inside them, he was free to move about anywhere and ascertain that nearly all available troops, except one division, had been withdrawn from Pretoria for concentration elsewhere. He even loitered about to hear the talk at a club frequented by officers and by ‘friendly’ civilians, whose privileges of membership nobody assumed the right to question. There and in hotel halls or billiard-rooms, where officers, regardless of attentive listeners, incautiously spoke of their own probable movements, this young Boer picked up much entertaining gossip and useful information. But he also learned, to his dismay, that nobody could move about the town or leave it after nightfall without the countersign. His idea was to get out again under cover of darkness, with all the news that he could gather for General Botha, but he heard that provisional police would by that time be patrolling all the streets, alert and zealous in the performance of their new duties, and also that every outlet by which a horseman could pass would have double sentries posted after sunset. A wary Boer never tries rash experiments if he can avoid them, and this young man, having no unpatriotic wish to run his head into a noose, adopted other measures.