"I dare say you have some good cigars?" Yorke asked when they were seated.
"Yes, but I don't sell many of them at present."
He took a box out of a cupboard, where it was hidden under some corks and dusters. Yorke took out two, handed one to the landlord and lighted the other himself.
"You are English, I see."
"Yes, we are mostly English here—worse luck just at present."
"I am English too," Yorke said, speaking for the first time in his own language.
The landlord looked at him in astonishment. "I should never have thought it," he said. "You speak Dutch ever so much better than I do, and you look like a Boer all over."
"Yes, I am disguised. I have made my way down from Johannesburg, and I want to get through the Boer lines. That is what I want to talk to you about. Where are they now? First, tell me what has been done here."
"Well, on the 1st of November the Boers came in here, and had their own way for two months. Then on the 1st of January General French came up and surrounded the place, and there was fighting in the hills for two or three days; but the Boers captured a company of the Suffolks who attacked a hill outside the town, and they were afterwards reinforced so strongly that, after repulsing one attack, French retired, and things have been quiet since. The English hold Molteno. A good many men have gone down that way."