d and crawled into the hut, looking like a
gigantic white-headed beetle as he did so, a creature, I
remembered, to which I had once compared him in the past. I
followed, carrying the historic stool, and when he had seated
himself on his kaross on the further side of the fire, took up my
position opposite to him. This fire was fed with some kind of
root or wood that gave a thin clear flame with little or no
smoke. Over it he crouched, so closely that his great head
seemed to be almost in the flame at which he stared with
unblinking eyes as he had done at the sun, circumstances which
added to his terrifying appearance and made me think of a certain
region and its inhabitants.

"Why do you come here, Macumazahn?" he asked after studying me
for a while through that window of fire.

"Because you brought me, Zikali, partly through your messenger,
Nombe, and partly by means of a dream which she says you sent."

"Did I, Macumazahn? If so, I have forgotten it. Dreams are as
many as gnats by the water; they bite us while we sleep, but when
we wake up we forget them. Also it is foolishness to say that
one man can send a dream to another."

"Then your messenger lied, Zikali, especially as she added that
she brought it."

"Of course she lied, Macumazahn. Is she not my pupil whom I have
trained from a child? Moreover, she lied well, it would seem,
who guessed what sort of a dream you would have when you thought
of turning your steps to Zululand."

"Why do you play at sticks (i.e., fence) with me, Zikali, seeing
that neither of us are children?"

"O Macumazahn, that is where you are mistaken, seeing that both
of us, old though we be and cunning though we think ourselves,
are nothing but babes in the arms of Fate. Well, well, I will
tell you the truth, since it would be foolish to try to throw
dust into such eyes as yours. I knew that you were down in
Sekukuni's country and I was watching you--through my spies. You
have been nowhere during all these years that I was not watching
you--through my spies. For instance, that Arab-looking man named
Harut, whom first you met at a big kraal in a far country, was a
spy of mine. He has visited me lately and told me much of your
doings. No, don't ask me of him now who would talk to you of
other matters--"

"Does Harut still live then, and has he found a new god in place
of the Ivory Child?" I interrupted.

"Macumazahn, if he did not live, how could he visit and speak