“Let me look,” I said, and I looked for a long while and saw nothing except the five bits of glass.  So I told Jan outright that he was a fool whom any conjurer could play with, but he waited until I had done and then asked Sihamba what the vision meant.

“Father of Swallow,” she answered, “what I saw in the water mirror you have seen, only I saw more than you did because my sight is keener.  You ask me what it means, but I cannot tell you altogether, for such visions are uncertain; they sum up the future but they do not show it all.  This, however, is sure, that trouble waits us every one because of Swart Piet, for his shadow lay thick upon the image of each of us; only note this, that while it cleared away from the rest, it remained upon mine, staining it blood-red, which means that while in the end you will escape him, I shall die at his hands, or through him.  Well, so be it, but meanwhile this is my counsel—­because of other things that I saw in the water which I cannot describe, for in truth I know not rightly what they were—­that the marriage of the Swallow and her husband should be put off, and that when they are married it should be at the dorp yonder, not here.”

Now when I heard this my anger overflowed like water in a boiling pot.  “What!” I cried, “when all is settled and the predicant has ridden for two days to do the thing, is the marriage to be put off because forsooth this little black idiot declares that she sees things on bits of glass in a bowl, and because you, Jan, who ought to know better, take the lie from her lips and make it your own?  I say that I am mistress here and that I will not allow it.  If we are to be made fools of in this fashion by the peepings and mutterings of Kaffir witch-doctors we had better give up and die at once to go and live among the dead, whose business it is to peep and mutter.  Our business is to dwell in the world and to face its troubles and dangers until such time as it pleases God to call us out of the world, paying no heed to omens and magic and such like sin and folly.  Let that come which will come, and let us meet it like men and women, giving glory to the Almighty for the ill as well as for the good, since both ill and good come from His hands and are part of His plan.  For my part I trust to Him who made us and who watches us, and I fear not Swart Piet, and therefore chance what may the marriage shall go on.”

“Good words,” said Jan, “such as my heart approves of;” but he still mopped his head with the coloured pocket-handkerchief and looked troubled as he added, “I pray you, wife, say nothing of this to anybody, and above all to the predicant, or he will put me out of the church as a wizard.”