“Good, Macumazahn.  I have this to say.  I who am the son of one who was greater than he, have plotted to seize the throne of Zululand from him who sits upon that throne.  It is true, for I grew weary of my idleness as a petty chief.  Moreover, I should have succeeded with the help of Zikali, who hates the House of Senzangacona, though me, who am of its blood, he does not hate, because ever I have striven against that House.  But it seems from his message and those words spoken by an angry woman, that I have been betrayed, and that to-night or to-morrow night, or by the next moon, the slayers will be upon me, smiting me before I can smite, at which I cannot grumble.”

“By whom have you been betrayed, Umslopogaas?”

“By that wife of mine, as I think, Macumazahn.  Also by Lousta, my blood-brother, over whom she has cast her net and made false to me, so that he hopes to win her whom he has always loved and with her the Chieftainship of the Axe.  Now what shall I do?—­Tell me, you whose eyes can see in the dark.”

I thought a moment and answered, “I think that if I were you, I would leave this Lousta to sit in my place for a while as Chief of the People of the Axe, and take a journey north, Umslopogaas.  Then if trouble comes from the Great House where a king sits, it will come to Lousta who can show that the People of the Axe are innocent and that you are far away.”

“That is cunning, Macumazahn.  There speaks the Great Medicine.  If I go north, who can say that I have plotted, and if I leave my betrayer in my place, who can say that I was a traitor, who have set him where I used to sit and left the land upon a private matter?  And now tell me of this journey of yours.”

So I told him everything, although until that moment I had not made up my mind to go upon this journey, I who had come here to his kraal by accident, or so it seemed, and by accident had delivered to him a certain message.

“You wish to consult a white witch-doctoress, Macumazahn, who according to Zikali lives far to the north, as to the dead.  Now I too, though perchance you will not think it of a black man, desire to learn of the dead; yes, of a certain wife of my youth who was sister and friend as well as wife, whom too I loved better than all the world.  Also I desire to learn of a brother of mine whose name I never speak, who ruled the wolves with me and who died at my side on yonder Witch-Mountain, having made him a mat of men to lie on in a great and glorious fight.  For of him as of the woman I think all day and dream all night, and I would know if they still live anywhere and I may look to see them again when I have died as a warrior should and as I hope to do.  Do you understand, Watcher-by-Night?”

I answered that I understood very well, as his case seemed to be like my own.