“Good-day to you, Macumazahn,” she said in her gentle voice, “you have gone through much since last we met on the night before Goza took you away to Ulundi.”

Now remembering all, I was filled with indignation against this little humbug.

“The last time we met, Nombe,” I said, “was when you played the part of a woman who is dead in the Vale of Bones by the king’s kraal.”

She regarded me with a kindly commiseration, and answered, shaking her head—­

“You have been very ill, Macumazahn, and your spirit still tricks you.  I played the part of no woman in any valley by the king’s kraal, nor were my eyes rejoiced with the sight of you there or elsewhere till they brought you to this place, so changed that I should scarcely have known you.”

“You little liar!” I said rudely.

“Do the white people always name those liars who tell them true things they cannot understand?” she inquired with a sweet innocence.  Then without waiting for an answer, she patted my hand as though I were a fretful child and gave me some soup in a gourd, saying, “Drink it, it is good.  The lady Heddana made it herself in the white man’s fashion.”

I drank the soup, which was very good, and as I handed back the gourd, answered—­

“Kaatje has told me that the lady Heddana is dead.  Can the dead make soup?”

She considered the point while she threw some bits of meat out of the bottom of the gourd to the dog, Lost, then replied—­

“I do not know, Macumazahn, or indeed whether the dead eat as we do.  Next time my Spirit visits me I will make inquiry and tell you the answer.  But I do know that it is very strange that you, who always turn your back upon the truth, are so ready to accept falsehoods.  Why should you believe that the lady Heddana is dead just because Kaatje told you so, when I who am still alive had sworn to you that I would protect her with my life?  Nay, speak no more now.  To-morrow if you are well enough you shall see and judge for yourself.”

She drew up the kaross over me, again patted my hand in her motherly fashion and departed, still smiling, after which I went to sleep again, so dreamlessly that I think there was some native soporific in that soup.

On the following day two of Zikali’s servants who did the rougher work of my sick room, if I may so call it, arrived and said that they were going to carry me out of the cave for a while, if that were my will.  I who longed to breathe the fresh air again, said that it was very much my will, whereon they grasped the rough bedstead which I have described by either end and very carefully bore me down the cave and through its narrow entrance, where they set the bedstead in the shadow of the overhanging rock without.  When I had recovered a little, for even that short journey tired me, I looked about me and perceived that as I had expected, I was in the Black Kloof, for there in front of me were the very huts which we had occupied on our arrival from Swazi-Land.