They passed banks, stores, and palatial-looking offices, with electric globes and gas lamps ranged over them. They passed crowds of fashionably dressed men and women, all seemingly busy and lively enough. In spite of those earthworks and guns which covered them wherever they went; in spite of the constantly blazoned fact that they were completely at the mercy of their armed masters, who patrolled the city as warders do a penal settlement,--they were allowed to earn and spend as much money as they pleased, after paying the exorbitant taxes, dress as they please, and drink what they could pay for. But they had no more civic rights than convicts or slaves have. They had no means to defend their women or children from insult. The male portion wore beards and dressed like men, but they were only men in outward appearance. They might as well have had chains upon their wrists and ankles. They were voluntary slaves and shadow citizens. They were just what their rude masters called them--Uitlanders--and on the same level as the vanquished and down-trodden Kaffirs. Yet they called themselves British, afraid as they were to show the Flag of England or to sing the National Anthem; all they could do was to dress, drink, and make money, and, like the servile clients of ancient Rome, bend their supple backs to their arrogant and uncouth patrons, and thank them for permission to live. Sixty thousand souls who had been born free, for the sake of gold bent the knee before sixteen thousand uncultivated retarders of civilisation. Their condition was ten times worse than that of the Scots when Edward enslaved them with his overpowering hosts. More degrading, because they were children of the nineteenth century, who had consented to be driven by a race who had not advanced past the benighted and rusty prejudices of the dark ages of bigotry and superstition. More shameful, since they outnumbered their tyrants five times over. No wonder that these Boers regarded Britons with contempt, and the Empire as a fallen tree. CHAPTER EIGHT. MR PHILIP MARTIN. England was powerless to help the Uitlanders as long as they chose to remain inert and submissive under the yoke. Dr Jameson and his dauntless band had demonstrated that no outside heroism could lift the yoke from their shoulders while they bent beneath it so passively. Only from their own ranks must the Wallace and the Bruce rise to free them. Ned and his chums had already read some of the literature of these Uitlanders, explaining and excusing themselves for their inaction during the Raid, or even supporting the tyrants in their oppression. These books and pamphlets had, before they reached the country, made them grind their teeth with fury. Fancy a Wallace and a Bruce waiting for the sanction of the Government before they took up their swords! Fancy their supporters waiting for permission before they rose to help their heroes!