hunt at night. To this spot she made
her way under cover of the darkness--for though she still greatly feared
to be alone at night, her pressing need conquered her fears--and found
that the hole was yet there, for a tall weed growing in its mouth had
caused it to be overlooked by those whose duty it was to mend the fence.
With her assegai she widened it a little, then drew her lithe shape
through it, and lying hidden till the guard had passed, climbed the two
stone walls beyond. Once she was free of the town, she set her course by
the stars and started forward at a steady run.

"If my strength holds I shall yet be in time to warn him," she muttered
to herself. "Ah! friend Hokosa, this new madness of yours has blunted
your wits that once were sharp enough. You have set me free, and now you
shall learn how I can use my freedom. Not for nothing have I been your
pupil, Hokosa the fox."

Before the dawn broke Noma was thirty miles from the Great Place, and
before the next dawn she was a hundred. At sunset on that second day she
stood among mountains. To her right stretched a great defile, a rugged
place of rocks and bush, wherein she knew that the regiments of the king
were hid in ambush. Perchance she was too late, perchance the _impi_ of
Hafela had already passed to its doom in yonder gorge. Swiftly she ran
forward on to the trail which led to the gorge, to find that it had been
trodden by many feet and recently. Moving to and fro she searched the
spoor with her eyes, then rose with a sigh of joy. It was old, and
marked the passage of the great company of women and children and their
thousands of cattle which, in execution of the plot, had travelled this
path some days before. Either the _impi_ had not yet arrived, or it had
gone by some other road. Weary as she was, Noma followed the old spoor
backwards. A mile or more away it crossed the crest of a hog-backed
mountain, from whose summit she searched the plain beyond, and not in
vain, for there far beneath her twinkled the watch-fires of the army of
Hafela.

Three hours later a woman, footsore and utterly exhausted, staggered
into the camp, and waving aside the spears that were lifted to stab her,
demanded to be led to the prince. Presently she was there.

"Who is this woman?" asked the great warrior; for, haggard as she was
with travel, exhaustion, and the terror of her haunted loneliness, he
did not know her in the uncertain firelight.

"Hafela," she said, "I am No