"Ah, then, you would not know the farm! It is not very far from where the two rivers fall into the Vaal, twenty miles or so below Heidelberg." "I suppose your people are with the Heidelberg commando?" Yorke nodded. "Well, I don't know much about war," the German said, "for I slipped away from home before my time came to join the army, and I am not likely to return; but it certainly seems to me queer that, though it is more than three months since the business began, you have not taken either Ladysmith, Kimberley, or Mafeking yet; and yet your people made sure that by this time they would be at Durban on one side, and Cape Town on the other. It has been badly managed." "Very badly managed," Yorke agreed. "If it had been left to Joubert to do as he liked, things would have gone differently, but he was interfered with by Kruger, and Steyn, and all Kruger's people here. I was very sorry at first that I could not go with the others to Natal, but I begin to think I am better off at home than they are. Besides, after all it does not matter to me whether we drive the Rooineks out or not. As far as I can see they have done no harm; we get a lot more for our cattle now than we did before they came, and if they were all to go, prices would fall again." "You are right," the German said; "hotel-keeping would not be a paying game with us if all the Uitlanders were driven out. So far, I reckon that, what with the hotels and stores being closed and most of the mines shut down, and almost all the men with money gone, this town is millions of pounds poorer than it was last year. You seem a sensible young fellow, but most of your people are so unreasonable that there is no talking with them. They know very little themselves, and believe everything that is told them. Of course we who live here are obliged to seem to agree with them, but we don't at heart believe that things are going to turn out as they fancy. They know nothing about England, and we do. When I first left Germany I went there and learned my business as a waiter in a hotel in London, and I know something about them, and how they put down that great mutiny in India. I fancy it will be the same thing here." By this time Yorke had finished his breakfast, and, saying that he might as well have a look round and see about getting the stores he wanted, he took his hat, and telling the German that he would be in about one o'clock to dinner, went out. CHAPTER XIV A BAND OF SCOUNDRELS