How the other men passed through their interview with him I do not know, but Mr. Hattingh's story, told in his own words, runs thus:
After a few questions had been put, the British officer said to him:
"You have been found guilty of high treason, but Lord Kitchener has been kind enough to commute your sentence to banishment as prisoner of war."
"But how could you find me guilty?" Mr. Hattingh asked. "I have never been tried."
"Be silent," the officer commanded sternly. "You have nothing to say."
Mr. Hattingh says he was only too glad to "be silent," and betook himself to the Rest Camp with alacrity.
During the weeks of their imprisonment in the jail those at Harmony were not living in a bed of roses.
Of Willie Botha's loyalty they never had a doubt, but the other men were unknown to them, and they knew that all were aware of the part played by them in the Secret Service. And even if they were not betrayed by one of the prisoners, it was a mystery that they had not been betrayed with them.
Many of their friends, the families of the men in jail, had been sent to Camps or across the border, and no one was more surprised at finding themselves still in Pretoria than Mrs. van Warmelo and her daughter.
They felt the strain, the uncertainty of their position keenly, and throughout those weeks they were obliged to conceal from their good friends, the Consuls and their families, the danger to which they were exposed and the intense anxiety with which they were filled, not only on their own account, but for those brave men in the Pretoria jail.