“But will he come to love me again?”

Hokosa shrugged his shoulders.

“I know not,” he answered; “that is for you to see to.  Yet this is sure, that if a tree grows up before the house of a man, shutting it off from the sunlight, when that tree is cut down the sun shines upon his house again.”

“It is nothing to the sun on what he shines,” said the woman.

“If the saying does not please you, then forget it.  I promise you this and no more, that very soon the man shall cease to turn to your rival.”

“The medicine will not harm her?” asked the woman doubtfully.  “She has worked me bitter wrong indeed, yet she is my sister, whom I nursed when she was little, and I do not wish to do her hurt.  If only he will welcome me back and treat me kindly, I am willing even that she should dwell on beneath my husband’s roof, bearing his children, for will they not be of my own blood?”

“Woman,” answered Hokosa impatiently, “you weary me with your talk.  Did I say that the charm would hurt her?  I said that it would cause your husband to hate the sight of her.  Now begone, taking or leaving it, and let me rest.  If your mind is troubled, throw aside that medicine, and go soothe it with such sights as you saw last night.”

On hearing this the woman sprang up, hid away the poison in her hair, and taking her basket of fruit, passed from the kraal as secretly as she had entered it.

“Why did you give her death-medicine?” asked Noma of Hokosa, as he stood staring after her.  “Have you a hate to satisfy against the husband or the girl who is her rival?”

“None,” he answered, “for they have never crossed my path.  Oh, foolish woman! cannot you read my plan?”

“Not altogether, Husband.”

“Listen then:  this woman will give to her sister a medicine of which in the end she must die.  She may be discovered or she may not, but it is certain that she will be suspected, seeing that the bitterness of the quarrel between them is known.  Also she will give to the Messenger certain fruits, after eating of which he will be taken sick and in due time die, of just such a disease as that which carries off the woman’s rival.  Now, if any think that he is poisoned, which I trust none will, whom will they suppose to have poisoned him, though indeed they can never prove the crime?”

“The plan is clever,” said Noma with admiration, “but in it I see a flaw.  The woman will say that she had the drug from you, or, at the least, will babble of her visit to you.”

“Not so,” answered Hokosa, “for on this matter the greatest talker in the world would keep silence.  Firstly, she, being a Christian, dare not own that she has visited a witch-doctor.  Secondly, the fruit she brought in payment was stolen, therefore she will say nothing of it.  Thirdly, to admit that she had medicine from me would be to admit her guilt, and that she will scarcely do even under torture, which by the new law it is not lawful to apply.  Moreover, none saw her come here, and I should deny her visit.”