Outside in the street, the motley crowd having melted away upon his appearance, General Selig Brounckers was saying to Van Busch:
"It is a pity that the Engelschwoman's story was not true about that mare and spider. For if a mare and spider there had been, you might perhaps have kept them for your trouble——"
—"Now I come to think of it, Myjnheer Commandant," said Van Busch in a hurry, "perhaps the woman was not lying, after all. Bough has a mouse-coloured trotter in the stables at Haargrond Plaats, and a spider stands under the waggon-shed in the yard. If they are hers, I'll let Bough know Myjnheer Commandant said I was to have them. He'll make no bones about parting then. Sure, no! he'll never dare to."
"I will send a couple of my burghers with you to take care he does not," said the Commandant, in what was for the redoubtable Brounckers an easy tone. "It is unlucky," he added less pleasantly, "that you were such a verdoemte clever knave as to tell the Engelschwoman I had commandeered both beast and vehicle for Republics' use. Because now I will do it, look you! No Boer's son that lives, by the Lord! will I suffer to make Selig Brounckers out a liar." He added, as Van Busch salaamed and squirmed with more than Oriental submissiveness, "Least of all a sneaking Africander schelm like you. And now, about the money?"
"Excellentie——" lisped Van Busch, smiling his oily brown face into ingratiating creases ...
"I am no Excellentie.... Of how much money, properly belonging to the Republics' war-chest, have you cheated this little fool of an Engelschwoman?"
"Five weeks back, Myjnheer Commandant," bleated Van Busch, "I had from her one hundred and fifty pounds, which I swear as an honest man has been handed over to Myjnheer Blinders——"
"He has accounted to me."
"Five weeks back——?" Van Busch hinted.