On my return to Mosita I at once despatched old Boaz to Mafeking, giving them the intelligence of the victories in Natal.  This proved to be the first news that reached them from the more important theatre of the war.  Our life now became uneventful once more.  One day an old Irish lady, wife of a neighbouring farmer, dropped in for a chat.  She was a nice old woman, as true as steel, and terribly worried by these dreadful times.  She had a married daughter in the Transvaal, and a brother also, whose sons, as well as daughters’ husbands, would, she sorely feared, be commandeered to fight, in which case they might unknowingly be shooting their own relations over the border.  It was the same tale of misery, anxiety, and wretchedness, everywhere, and the war was but a few weeks old.  The population in that colony, whether Dutch or English, were so closely mixed together—­their real interests so parallel—­that it resolved itself locally into a veritable civil war.  It was all the more dreadful that these poor farmers, after having lost all their cattle by rinderpest, had just succeeded in getting together fresh herds, and were hoping for renewed prosperity.  Then came the almost certain chance of their beasts being raided, of their stores being looted, and of their women and children having to seek shelter to avoid rough treatment and incivility.  Often during the long evenings, especially when I was suffering from depression of spirits, I used to argue with Mr. Keeley about the war and whether it was necessary.  It seemed to me then we were not justified in letting loose such a millstream of wretchedness and of destruction, and that the alleged wrongs of a large white population—­who, in spite of everything, seemed to prosper and grow rich apace—­scarcely justified the sufferings of thousands of innocent individuals.  Mr. Keeley was a typical old colonist, one who knew the Boers and their character well, and I merely quote what he said, as no doubt it was, and is, the opinion of many other such men.  He opined that this struggle was bound to come, declaring that all the thinking men of the country had foreseen it.  The intolerance of the Boers, their arrogance, their ignorance, on which they prided themselves, all proclaimed them as unfit to rule over white or black people.  Of late years had crept in an element of treachery and disloyalty, emanating from their jealousy of the English, which by degrees was bound to permeate the whole country, spreading southward to Cape Colony itself, till the idea of “Africa for the Dutch, and the English in the sea,” would have been a war-cry that might have dazzled hundreds of to-day’s so-called loyal colonists.  He even asserted that those at the head of affairs in England had shown great perspicacity and a clear insight into the future.  If at the Bloemfontein Conference, or after, Kruger had given the five years’ franchise, and the dispute had been patched up for the moment, it would have been the greatest misfortune that could have happened.