questioned as to my doings, but could tell nothing that would go against
me in an accusation of witchcraft. She was kept a close prisoner in a
hut until the return of Tambusa, when she had been put to the torture to
force her to confess. They had burned her with fire, had broken her
joints with heavy knob-sticks, and that not on one day, but on many; but
she would say nothing, till at last, losing patience, Tambusa had
ordered her to be thrown outside and knobkerried. But the slayers had
done their work in bungling fashion, and so she had waited until night
and dragged herself away in the darkness to die alone. Then, when faint
and too weak to move, the hyenas had fallen upon her.

No, the King could not have known, for it was in order to condemn me
before him that they had tortured her, she said. But when I asked why
they should have selected her rather than the other two, then, _Nkose_,
came in the old, old tale, the mischief that can be wrought by a woman's
tongue. That vision which Nomshasa had beheld while asleep at my side
she could not keep to herself. She had chattered about it, and this
coming to the ears of the two principal indunas who, in their jealous
hatred, were watching my every movement, had put it into their minds to
use her as a means of substantiating a charge of witchcraft against me,
such a charge as Dingane himself would hardly venture to shield me from
the penalty of. But the poor girl had been heavily punished indeed for
giving way to the weakness of women--the wagging of too long a tongue;
though in her constancy under the torments they heaped upon her she had
shown no weakness at all, but rather the strength and bravery of the
most valiant of warriors; and this I told her.

She was greatly pleased, and a drawn smile came over her face in the
midst of her pain.

"I loved thee, Untuswa," she said, "and I rejoiced when the King gave
me, a captive girl who might have been made a slave, to wife to such a
noted warrior as thou. And I think thou didst prefer me a little to the
other two, but thou wert ever kind to me, and the torturers might have
torn me into small pieces before I would have let fall one word to harm
thee. And now I think I were better dead, for there might in time be
others whom thou might prefer to me; yet for a little while I have been
first."

All this was said, not as I have told it to you, _Nkose_, but slowly and
in gasps, and I, well, thinking of Lalusini, it se