make you run away with me if I chose, although I am black and you are white—­oh, yes, before to-morrow morning.  But I won’t do it; for why should I catch you in my unlucky web and bring you into all sorts of trouble among my people and your own?  Go you your road, Macumazahn, and I will go mine as the wind blows me.  And now give me a cup of water and let me be away—­a cup of water, no more.  Oh, do not be afraid for me, or melt too much, lest I should melt also.  I have an escort waiting over yonder hill.  There, thank you for your water, Macumazahn, and good night.  Doubtless we shall meet again ere long, and—­ I forgot; the Little Wise One said he would like to have a talk with you.  Good night, Macumazahn, good night.  I trust that you did a profitable trade with Umbezi my father and Masapo my husband.  I wonder why such men as these should have been chosen to be my father and my husband.  Think it over, Macumazahn, and tell me when next we meet.  Give me that pretty mirror, Macumazahn; when I look in it I shall see you as well as myself, and that will please me—­you don’t know how much.  I thank you.  Good night.”

In another minute I was watching her solitary little figure, now wrapped again in the hooded kaross, as it vanished over the brow of the rise behind us, and really, as she went, I felt a lump rising in my throat.  Notwithstanding all her wickedness—­and I suppose she was wicked—­there was something horribly attractive about Mameena.

When she had gone, taking my only looking-glass with her, and the lump in my throat had gone also, I began to wonder how much fact there was in her story.  She had protested so earnestly that she told me all the truth that I felt sure there must be something left behind.  Also I remembered she had said Zikali wanted to see me.  Well, the end of it was I took a moonlight walk up that dreadful gorge, into which not even Scowl would accompany me, because he declared that the place was well known to be haunted by imikovu, or spectres who have been raised from the dead by wizards.

It was a long and disagreeable walk, and somehow I felt very depressed and insignificant as I trudged on between those gigantic cliffs, passing now through patches of bright moonlight and now through deep pools of shadow, threading my way among clumps of bush or round the bases of tall pillars of piled-up stones, till at length I came to the overhanging cliffs at the end, which frowned down on me like the brows of some titanic demon.

Well, I got to the end at last, and at the gate of the kraal fence was met by one of those fierce and huge men who served the dwarf as guards.  Suddenly he emerged from behind a stone, and having scanned me for a moment in silence, beckoned to me to follow him, as though I were expected.  A minute later I found myself face to face with Zikali, who was seated in the clear moonlight just outside the shadow of his hut, and engaged, apparently, in his favourite occupation of carving wood with a rough native knife of curious shape.