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By Root 3647 0

corpsmen. Reverend Saltwood actually jumped up and down, throwing his arms in the air and crying, 'God be praised!' In a frenzy of relief he clasped the men who had been so miraculously saved and knelt in the dust to untie their ankle fetters. Then he led them in prayers, which seemed to gush forth as if God Himself were rejoicing. In his exultation at this happy escape from tragedy, even though the unlucky fifth rebel dangled dead, he found himself next to Tjaart van Doorn, and in mutual joy the two enemies embraced. 'Thank God, thank God!' Hilary mumbled repeatedly as he and Tjaart danced in the shadow of the gallows.

'Tjaart!' Saltwood cried ecstatically. 'You must come and worship with me. We can be friends, truly we can.'

'Maybe we can,' Tjaart said, and it was in that moment of reconciliation that the awful thing happened.

'Re-form!' Cuyler snorted. 'Bring new ropes.'

'What?' Saltwood cried, unable to comprehend what he was hearing.

'New ropes!'

'But, Colonel! In English law ... if the rope breaks, the man goes free!'

As soon as Hilary voiced this ancient edict, and a good one it was, for it acknowledged that God Himself sometimes intervened to save the condemned, the crowd took up the cry, and those relatives who had been rejoicing with their reprieved men ran to the officer, reminding him of this honored tradition.

'They are saved!' the people cried. 'You cannot hang them a second time.'

'True,' Saltwood pleaded, tugging at Cuyler's sleeve. 'It's a custom all men honor. The hanging was completed when God intervened.'

Suddenly Cuyler's eyes hardened. He had a job to do, a revolution to quell. Having been driven away from Albany, he understood the terror that could engulf a land when revolutionary ideas were allowed to gallop across a countryside, and he intended having none of that in Africa. These men must die. So it was frustrating when this damn-fool English priest started making trouble. With a vigorous shove he knocked Saltwood back and cried to his orderly, 'Bind that silly ass and take him away.'

'No, sir, no!' Hilary protested. 'You will defile this land if you'

'Take him away,' Cuyler said coldly, and soldiers seized the missionary, clapping a hand over his mouth so that he could protest no further, and dragged him off.

Then the four survivors whom God had touched were placed once more upon the platforms, their faces ashen as fresh ropes were tied about their necks.

It was not a roar that came from the crowd. It was not a military challenge to the new government. It was only a vast sigh of anguish that so foul a thing should be done on so fair a day. Then, from the area in which he was being held, came Saltwood's high begging scream: 'No! No!'

Once more the platforms were kicked aside. This time the ropes held.

When Tjaart van Doorn returned to De Kraal he was silent for a long while, then grimly he summoned his mother, his wife, his children, and in solemn conclave lined out the mystical litany that would be recited in die-hard Boer families from that day forward: 'Never forget the Black Circuit when Hottentots and liars bore testimony in English courts against honest Boers. Never forget how the English have tried to banish our language. Never forget Slagter's Nek, where an English officer hanged the same men twice, in disobedience to God's law.'

Tjaart was twenty-six now, a quiet, stubborn man emerging slowly from the shadows of his father's flaming exuberance to assume responsibility for De Kraal. His character was not yet fully formed; he supported all his fiery father had done, even his near-treason, convincing himself that 'Father was driven to it in desperation over the illegal acts of the English.' But he knew he could never take the Hammer's place as champion of the Boers; his was a calmer approach, that of the self-confident bull who rules the pasture without bellowing. It became obvious to him that English rule would have to be challenged, but when and how, he could not guess. He supposed that the invaders would make one small mistake after another, digging their own graves, until