Hearing this, I hid my face in my hands lest Hans should see human tears unscented with attar of roses, and bade him continue.

“Baas, the White One who was called Star, asked me of your son, the young Baas Harry, and I told her that when last I had seen him he was strong and well and would make a bigger man than you were, whereat she sighed and shook her head.  Then the Missie Marie said:  ’Tell the Baas, Hans, that I also have a child which he will see one day, but it is not a son.’

“After this they, too, said something about Love, but what it was I cannot remember, since even as I repeat this dream to you it is beginning to slip away from me fast as a swallow skimming the water.  Their last words, however, I do remember.  They were:  ’Say to the Baas that we who never met in life, but who here are as twin sisters, wait and count the years and count the months and count the days and count the hours and count the minutes and count the seconds until once more he shall hear our voices calling to him across the night.’  That’s what they say, Baas.  Then they were gone and only the flowers remained to show that they had been standing there.

“Now I set off to bring you the message and travelled a very long way at a great rate; if Jana himself had been after me I could not have gone more fast.  At last I got out of that quiet place and among mountains where there were dark kloofs, and there in the kloofs I heard Zulu impis singing their war-song; yes, they sang the ingoma or something very like it.  Now suddenly in the pass of the mountains along which I sped, there appeared before me a very beautiful woman whose skin shone like the best copper coffee kettle after I have polished it, Baas.  She was dressed in a leopard-like moocha and wore on her shoulders a fur kaross, and about her neck a circlet of blue beads, and from her hair there rose one crane’s feather tall as a walking-stick, and in her hand she held a little spear.  No flowers sprang beneath her feet when she walked towards me and no birds sang, only the air was filled with the sound of a royal salute which rolled among the mountains like the roar of thunder, and her eyes flashed like summer lightning.”

Now I let my hands fall and stared at him, for well I knew what was coming.

“‘Stand, yellow man!’ she said, ‘and give me the royal salute.’

“So I gave her the Bayete, though who she might be I did not know, since I did not think it wise to stay to ask her if it were hers of right, although I should have liked to do so.  Then she said:  ’The Old Man on the plain yonder and those two pale White Ones have talked to you of their love for your master, the Lord Macumazana.  I tell you, little Yellow Dog, that they do not know what love can be.  There is more love for him in my eyes alone than they have in all that makes them fair.  Say it to the Lord Macumazana that, as I know well, he goes down to battle and that the Lady