This wise counsel was all very well, but Hansie had a mania for "collecting," and she could not make up her mind to destroy what might become a valuable relic of the war.
She therefore had her diaries and white envelopes removed to some safe hiding-place and began a new book for future use.
In this book, in everyday pen and ink, she entered the ordinary events of the day, but in another she wrote in lemon-juice her adventures with the spies and all information of an incriminating character. Both books lay open on her writing-table—the "White Diary," as she called it, with its clean and spotless pages, with only here and there an almost invisible mark to show how far she had got, and the misleading record in pen and ink to throw the English off their guard in the event of an unexpected search of the house.
The white diary gave a sense of security and satisfaction at the thought of the secrets it contained for future reference, and it was only after eight years that portions of the writing became visible to the naked eye.
A few hours' exposure to the sun's rays, and the application of a hot iron here and there, made it sufficiently legible to be rewritten word for word, and it is to the existence of this diary that we owe our accurate information of what otherwise would have been lost for ever.
I may add here that it was only the re-reading of the White Diary after so many years, and the surprising amount of half-forgotten information Hansie found in it, that suggested the idea to her mind of publishing its contents in the form of a story.
It was on the morning of July 17th, 1901, that Mr. Botha was seen coming up the garden path between the rows of orange trees at Harmony, with his jauntiest air, by which it was evident that he was the bearer of news from the front. Briefly he informed our heroines that two spies had come in the previous night and wished to see Mrs. van Warmelo about certain communications sent out by her to General Botha a few weeks back. They were staying with Mrs. Joubert, widow of the late Commandant-General P.J. Joubert, and were leaving again the next night with dispatches.
In the interview with them at 9 o'clock the next morning Hansie made her first acquaintance with Captain Naudé, who plays the principal part in the story here recorded, and whose courage and resource gave him an unquestioned position of leadership.
