"Now, do all you who have heard those words take note of them." Then Hans, seeing that the council was about to break up, and fearing lest he should be caught and killed, slipped away by the same road that he had come.

His thought was to warn me, but this he could not do because of the guards.

So he went to the Prinsloos, and finding the vrouw alone with Marie, who had recovered her mind, told them everything that he had heard.
As he said, Marie knelt down and prayed, or thought for a long while, then rose and spoke.
"Tante," she said to the vrouw, "one thing is clear, that Allan will be murdered at the dawn; now if he is hidden away he may escape." "But where and how can we hide him," asked the vrouw, "seeing that the place is guarded ?" "Tante," said Marie again, "at the back of your house is an old cattle kraal made by Kaffirs, and in that cattle kraal, as I have seen, there are mealie-pits where those Kaffirs stored their grain.

Now I suggest that we should put my husband into one of those mealie-pits and cover it over.

There the Boers might not find him, however close they searched." "That is a good idea," said the vrouw; "but how in the name of God are we to get Allan out of a guarded house into a mealie-pit ?" "Tante, I have a right to go to my husband's house, and there I will go.
Afterwards, too, I shall have the right to leave his house before he is taken away.