But again there was a delay, while the rain came and the grass grew, and the veld was as a mounted rifleman would have it.

The burghers were in no humour for concessions.

They knew their own power, and they concluded with justice that they were for the time far the strongest military power in South Africa.

'We have beaten England before, but it is nothing to the licking we shall give her now,' cried a prominent citizen, and he spoke for his country as he said it.

So the empire waited and debated, but the sounds of the bugle were already breaking through the wrangles of the politicians, and calling the nation to be tested once more by that hammer of war and adversity by which Providence still fashions us to some nobler and higher end..