I dismissed the calumny from my mind.

Providentially, (as I heard later), the news came of Boyce's "mention," and Somers was set down as a liar.

The poor devil was had up before the Colonel and being an imaginative and nervous man denied the truth of the rumour and by dexterous wriggling managed to exculpate himself from the charge of being its originator.
I must, parenthetically, crave indulgence for these apparently irrelevant details.

But as, in this chronicle, I am mainly concerned with the career of Leonard Boyce, I have no option but to give them.
They are necessary for a conception of the character of a remarkable man to whom I have every reason and every honourable desire to render justice.

It is necessary, too, that I should state clearly the manner in which I happened to learn the facts of the affair at Vilboek's Farm, for I should not like you to think that I have given a credulous ear to idle slander.
It was in Cape Town, whither I had been despatched, on a false alarm of enteric.