"You can safely visit all the Camps except those in the north, in the Zoutpansberg and Waterberg districts, and the one in Potchefstroom." ("Boers ahead!" was Hansie's mental comment.) "And I don't think you ought to go alone. Have you thought of any one who could accompany you?"
"Yes," Hansie replied. "A friend of mine, Mrs. Stiemens, who nursed with me at Irene, would like to go with me. She is the right woman for such an undertaking, strong and healthy and very cheerful."
This suggestion meeting with the Governor's approval, it was arranged that they should visit the camp at Middelburg first, and while they were preparing for the tour he would notify their visit to the various commandants and arrange about the permits.
Permission to hold a concert was instantly granted, and she was on the point of leaving, when he asked her whether she had heard of President Steyn's narrow escape.
Yes, she had heard something, but would like to know more about it.
With evident enjoyment he proceeded to relate how the President had slept in Reitz, a small, deserted village in the Free State, with twenty-seven men, how they had stabled their horses and made themselves generally comfortable for the night, how they were surrounded and surprised by the English, who took all their horses before the alarm could be given, how the President escaped on a small pony, which was standing unnoticed in the back yard, and how all the other men were captured, General Cronjé (the second), General Wessels, General Fraser, and many other well-known and prominent men. The President must have fled in the open in nothing but a shirt, because all his clothes and even his boots were left behind. In his pockets were many valuable letters and documents.
Altogether this event must have given the English great joy, but I think they forgot it in their chagrin at the President's escape, for when Hansie openly rejoiced and blessed the "small unnoticed pony," expressing her great admiration for the brave President, the Governor suddenly turned crusty again and said he could not understand how any one could admire a man who had been the ruin of his country.
"Poor old General!" Hansie mused as she cycled slowly up to Mrs. Joubert's house, where the spies were waiting for her. "I have never known him so quarrelsome and unkind. I wonder what it could have been! The German Consul's visit or the President's escape? What a mercy that he knew nothing of——" She cycled faster, suddenly remembering that it was late and there was still much to do before the two men could begin their perilous journey that night.
After she had handed the parcel over to them, with verbal instructions for its use, she bade them good-bye and went home to lunch.
That evening Mrs. van Warmelo took important documents, of which we speak later, and European newspaper cuttings to the Captain, with some money for her tattered son, and a letter for him in a disguised hand. No names were mentioned, and in the event of the spies falling into the hands of the enemy, nothing found on them could have incriminated any one.