We were still living in Belfast when the war came to an end. Our home at Rietvlei was in ruins and it was almost a year before my father was able to get a portion of it rebuilt. However, before returning there we lived for a time in Potchefstroom, where my father had interested himself in some gold properties. Prospecting was always fascinating to him and he was usually successful in these ventures.
His English secretary remained in Belfast, safe-guarding his interests there and making frequent visits to the homestead in the Valley of Reeds. Our kaffir farmers and servants had been widely scattered by the war, but soon began to drift back. Each told a different tale of his wanderings, and many of these were quite harrowing. A number of our people had escaped to Jafta's kraal and not a few had gone into Swaziland until the war ended.
Klaas, our old jockey and one of my dearest playmates, had disappeared during the second year of the war, but one day my father told me that he had returned to Rietvlei. Father was about to make one of his periodical trips to Belfast and the Valley of Reeds, and he promised to bring Klaas back with him to Potchefstroom.
He drove out to Rietvlei from Belfast and found Klaas very glad to see him. The little fellow was thin and worn-looking, but scrupulously clean. Father installed him again as his driver and next day started back for Potchefstroom. A mile or so from the old house father got out of the wagon to inspect a plantation. He was about seventy-five yards from the wagon when a threatening thunder-storm broke and a single bolt of lightning killed Klaas and both horses! This was a great blow to all of us, because we had come to regard the little black boy with genuine affection.
Not long after we returned to Rietvlei--such a happy homecoming as it was!--my father decided the time had come for me to get an education. Many of the old Boers frowned upon the thought of sending their sons abroad to be educated, feeling that they would never care to return to the farms their ancestors had founded in the wilderness with such bravery and determination. My father, however, was different. He believed that his sons should be abreast of the times, and he sent me to boarding-school and later to universities in Scotland and America, where I received my training as a physician.