trial as a traitor and a rebel. Such are the conditions under which the unarmed Uitlanders labour for reform. {41} (July, 1899.) Du Plessis was promoted to be Chief Inspector of Prisons shortly after the release of Messrs. Sampson and Davies, and still holds that post! PART II. A POSTSCRIPT. CHAPTER X. THREE YEARS' GRACE. Very seldom has any community been in a position so unsatisfactory as that in which the people of Johannesburg found themselves in the year 1896. Judgments passed in the heat of the moment upon matters which had not been properly explained, and which in many cases were completely obscured by deliberate misrepresentation, had incurred for the community dislike contempt and mistrust which were wholly undeserved. Those who knew the facts and who were able and willing to speak, the Reformers themselves, were bonded to abstain from politics for three years under penalty of banishment. Betrayed, deserted, muzzled, helpless, hopeless, and divided, no community could have been in a more unsatisfactory condition. It was abundantly clear that the time had been allowed to pass when the Imperial Government might have insisted upon reforms and the fulfilment of the President's promises--not in the spirit in which they had been made, but in the spirit in which the President himself had intended the world to construe them. The impact of the revelations was too great to permit of public judgment quickly recovering its balance. It was realized that Mr. Kruger's effects had been admirably stage-managed and that for the time being, and possibly for a very considerable time, the Uitlanders were completely out of court. There were a few--but how few!--whose faith was great and whose conviction that the truth must prevail was abiding, who realized that there was nothing for it but to begin all over again--to begin and to persevere upon sound lines; and they took heart of such signs as there were and started afresh. It has been an article of faith with them that Mr. Kruger missed his supreme chance at the time of the trial of the Reformers, and that from the date of the death-sentence his judgment and his luck have failed him. He abused his good fortune and the luck turned, so they say; and the events of the last three years go to support that impression. To his most faithful ally amongst the Uitlanders the President, in the latter days of 1896, commented adversely upon the ingratitude of those Reformers who had not called to thank him for his magnanimity; and this man replied: 'You must stop talking about that, President, because people are laughing at you. You made a bargain with them and they paid the price you asked, so now they owe you nothing.' But his Honour angrily repudiated that construction: nothing will convert him to that view.