“Did I, Macumazahn?  If so, I have forgotten it.  Dreams are as many as gnats by the water; they bite us while we sleep, but when we wake up we forget them.  Also it is foolishness to say that one man can send a dream to another.”

“Then your messenger lied, Zikali, especially as she added that she brought it.”

“Of course she lied, Macumazahn.  Is she not my pupil whom I have trained from a child?  Moreover, she lied well, it would seem, who guessed what sort of a dream you would have when you thought of turning your steps to Zululand.”

“Why do you play at sticks (i.e., fence) with me, Zikali, seeing that neither of us are children?”

“O Macumazahn, that is where you are mistaken, seeing that both of us, old though we be and cunning though we think ourselves, are nothing but babes in the arms of Fate.  Well, well, I will tell you the truth, since it would be foolish to try to throw dust into such eyes as yours.  I knew that you were down in Sekukuni’s country and I was watching you—­through my spies.  You have been nowhere during all these years that I was not watching you—­through my spies.  For instance, that Arab-looking man named Harut, whom first you met at a big kraal in a far country, was a spy of mine.  He has visited me lately and told me much of your doings.  No, don’t ask me of him now who would talk to you of other matters—­”

“Does Harut still live then, and has he found a new god in place of the Ivory Child?” I interrupted.

“Macumazahn, if he did not live, how could he visit and speak with me?  Well, I watched you there by the Oliphant’s River where you fought Sekukuni’s people, and afterwards in the marble hut where you found the old white man dead in his chair and got the writings that you have in your pocket which concern the maiden Heddana; also afterwards when the white man, your friend, killed the doctor who fell into a mud hole and the Basutos stole his cattle and wagon.”

“How do you know all these things, Zikali?”

“Have I not told you—­through my spies.  Was there not a half-breed driver called Footsack, and do not the Basutos come and go between the Black Kloof and Sekukuni’s town, bearing me tidings?”

“Yes, Zikali, and so does the wind and so do the birds.”

“True!  O Macumazahn, I see that you are one who has watched Nature and its ways as closely as my spies watch you.  So I learned these matters and knew that you were in trouble over the death of these white men, and your friends likewise, and as you were always dear to me, I sent that child Nombe to bring you to me, thinking from what I knew of you that you would be more likely to follow a woman who is both wise and good to look at, than a man who might be neither.  I told her to say to you that you and the others would be safer here than in Natal at present.  It seems that you hearkened and came.  That is all.”

“Yes, I hearkened and came.  But, Zikali, that is not all, for you know well that you sent for me for your own sake, not for mine.”