So the year dragged on with its one little glimmer of light and its big black clouds of disappointment, and it was Christmas-time when the spark came to the waiting tinder.  What a bloody bill could the holidays and holy days of the world tot up!  On the Sunday night before Christmas a British subject named Tom Jackson Edgar was shot dead in his own house by a Boer policeman.  Edgar, who was a man of singularly fine physique and both able and accustomed to take care of himself, was returning home at about midnight when one of three men standing by, who as it afterwards transpired was both ill and intoxicated, made an offensive remark.  Edgar resented it with a blow which dropped the other insensible to the ground.  The man’s friends called for the police and Edgar, meanwhile, entered his own house a few yards off.  There was no attempt at concealment or escape; Edgar was an old resident and perfectly well known.  Four policemen came, who in any circumstances were surely sufficient to capture him.  Moreover, if that had been considered difficult, other assistance could have been obtained and the house from which there could have been no escape might have been watched.  In any case Edgar was admitted by the police to have sat on the bed talking to his wife, and to have been thus watched by them through the window.  It is not stated that they called upon him to come out or surrender himself, but they proceeded immediately to burst in his door.  Hearing the noise he came out into the passage.  He may or may not have known that they were police:  he may or may not have believed them to be the three men by one of whom he had been insulted.  There is not a word of truth in the statement since made that Edgar had been drinking.  It was not alleged even in defence of the police, and the post-mortem examination showed that it was not so.  A Boer policeman named Jones (There are scores of Boers unable to speak a word of English, who nevertheless own very characteristic English, Scotch, and Irish names—­many of them being children of deserters from the British army!) revolver in hand burst the door open.  It is alleged by the prisoner and one of the police that as the door was burst open, Edgar from the passage struck the constable on the head twice with an iron-shod stick which was afterwards produced in Court.  On the other hand Mrs. Edgar and other independent witnesses—­spectators—­testified that Edgar did not strike a blow at all and could not possibly have done so in the time.  The fact, however, upon which all witnesses agree is that as the police burst open the door Constable Jones fired at Edgar and dropped him dead in the arms of his wife, who was standing in the passage a foot or so behind him.  On the following morning, the policeman was formally arrested on the charge of manslaughter and immediately released upon his comrades’ sureties of L200.