"I have an idea, Hans--our horses' tails are about the same colour. We might very well cut off about nine inches; that would give plenty of hair for our purpose. The only trouble would be fastening it into one's hat. We will stop at farmhouses as we go along, and when we get to an English settler's I will borrow a needle and thread from his wife. I will take out the inside lining of the hat, sew the hair in all round, except just in front, and then sew the lining on to it. That will keep it all tight." Hans laughed. "It will make you look very much like what I was before I visited the barber. No one would recognize you." The third house at which they stopped they found to be an English settler's. As they rode to the door, they were in the usual hospitable way asked to come in and have something to eat. "I am English like yourself," Yorke said, "and am serving as an officer with the force at De Aar, and I am going scouting to gather news of any movement on the other side of the Orange River. I may cross and go farther, but as I have been living for some time near Richmond, I may run against some of the rebel Dutch who have gone to join them, so I want to disguise myself." "Come in, sir; we will do anything we can. When I saw you riding up, I certainly took you both at first for Dutchmen, but I see now that you are far more clean and fresh-looking than they generally are." "Have many Dutch joined them from the colony?" "Not so many about here; but farther on they say a good many have gone from Colesberg and that district. But most of them are waiting for the Boer advance, then I think the greater portion of them will join; from all I hear, it is an arranged thing, and the Boers reckon confidently on being joined everywhere by their own people. I am going to start to-morrow for De Aar, and shall sell all my cattle there, for if the Boers come, they will be sure to carry them all off. I hear the commissariat are buying them up for the use of the troops, and are giving fair prices for them, so I shall be no loser by it; and I shall sell my horses to them also. I have not got many sheep, but what I have I shall get rid of, then we will shut up the house, put the best part of our belongings into a waggon, and travel down quietly to Port Elizabeth, and wait there till the business is over, and if we find it likely to last, we shall go home for a holiday. It is fifteen years since we came out here, and we have been talking of going to see the old folk for some time, so if I get a fair price for the animals, it would suit us very well."