“Oh! my swallow,” I cried aloud in grief, “the accursed hawk has carried away my swallow.”

“Nay, look,” said Sihamba, pointing upwards.

I looked, and behold! a black crow that appeared from behind the house, was wheeling about the hawk, striking at it with its beak until, that it might have its talons free to defend itself, it let go the swallow, which, followed by its mate, came fluttering to the earth, while the crow and the falcon passed away fighting, till they were lost in the blue depths of air.

Springing from the stoep I ran to where the swallow lay, but Sihamba was there before me and had it in her hands.

“The hawk’s beak has wounded it,” she said pointing to a blood stain among the red feathers of the breast, “but none of its bones are broken, and I think that it will live.  Let us put it in the nest and leave it to its mate and nature.”

This we did, and there in the nest it stayed for some days, its mate feeding it with flies as though it were still unfledged.  After that they vanished, both of them together, seeking some new home, nor did they ever build again beneath our eaves.

“Would you speak with me, Sihamba?” I asked when this matter of the swallows was done with.

“I would speak with the Baas, or with you, it is the same thing,” she answered, “and for this reason.  I go upon a journey; for myself I have the good black horse which the Baas gave me after I had ridden to warn you in Tiger Kloof yonder, the one that I cured of sickness.  But I need another beast to carry pots and food and my servant Zinti, who accompanies me.  There is the brown mule which you use little because he is vicious, but he is very strong and Zinti does not fear him.  Will you sell him to me for the two cows I earned from the Kaffir whose wife I saved when the snake bit her?  He is worth three, but I have no more to offer.”

“Whither do you wish to journey, Sihamba?” I asked.

“I follow my mistress to the dorp,” she answered.

“Did she bid you follow her, Sihamba?”

“No! is it likely that she would think of me at such a time, or care whether I come or go?  Fear not, I shall not trouble her, or put her to cost; I shall follow, but I shall not be seen until I am wanted.”

Now I had made up my mind to gainsay Sihamba, not that I could find any fault with her plan, but because if such arrangements are to be made, I like to make them myself, as is the business of the head of the house.  I think Sihamba guessed this; at any rate she answered me before I spoke, and that in an odd way, namely, by looking first at the swallow’s nest, then at the blooming bough of the peach tree, and lastly into the far distances of air.

“It was the black crow that drove the hawk away,” she said, reflectively, as though she were thinking of something else, “though I think, for my eyes are better than yours, that the hawk killed the crow, or perhaps they killed each other; at the least I saw them falling to the earth beyond the crest of the mountain.”