"General, your tiffin was a beauty, but your Camp--was very sad!" Mrs. van Warmelo laughed when Hansie repeated these words to her and said: "Oh, you have no idea how funny he is," and then she related the following incident to her daughter with great relish: After she had drawn up the first petition, she was out driving one afternoon with Mrs. General Joubert in the latter's carriage, going from house to house to get the signatures to the petition, and on the Sunnyside bridge they found the three inseparable Consuls, Aubert, Cinatti, and Nieuwenhuis, out for their daily constitutional, leaning over the railings and looking down into the stream below. Approaching the bridge from the opposite direction were Lord Kitchener and his A.D.C. on horseback, and the three parties met, as luck would have it, in the centre of the bridge. "The Consuls took off their hats in greeting to the ladies in the carriage, and then turned in salutation to Lord Kitchener, but I wish you could have seen the look Mr. Cinatti gave me, Hansie, as he glanced from the document in my hands to Lord Kitchener's retreating form. It spoke volumes, and I had the greatest difficulty in preserving my gravity." CHAPTER XIV NEW DEVELOPMENTS It was in the winter of 1901, while Hansie was at the Irene Concentration Camp, as one of six volunteer nurses from Pretoria, that Mrs. van Warmelo began her first adventures with the spies, and it has always been a source of keen regret to Hansie that she was not in Pretoria at the time. But one cannot have everything, and the knowledge she gained in the Camp was more valuable to her than any other experience she went through during the war. I have merely touched on the Concentration Camps in the previous chapter, for obvious reasons, and propose to entirely omit the events of the two months Hansie spent in the Irene Camp. As the six volunteer nurses were soon after expelled from the Camp by the military authorities, there was, fortunately for her, no opportunity of returning to her labour of love. Other duties awaited her at home, however, and by degrees she came into full possession of the facts connected with her mother's experiences during those months. Amongst the men caught in Pretoria on June 5th, 1900, when the British first entered the capital, were two heroes of this book, Mr. J. Naude and W.J. Botha. These men were destined, through their indecision in allowing themselves to be caught like rats in a trap, to fulfil with honour a role of great importance in the history of the war--a role unknown to the world, and without which this book would probably not have been written. Mr. Naude--who, by the way, was well known in town as beadle of the Dutch Reformed Church on Church Square immediately opposite the Government Buildings--had, after the first few days of uncertainty and remorse, no intention whatever of remaining long in durance vile.