hand. And as Masilo looked, he saw that she was indeed
his daughter, and he wept for joy that she was not lying dead in the
bottom of the lake. The old woman, however, seemed uneasy, and said to
Thakane: 'I feel as if someone was watching us. I will not leave the
girl to-day, but will take her back with me'; and sinking beneath the
surface, she drew the girl after her. After they had gone, Thakane
returned to the village, which Masilo had managed to reach before her.

All the rest of the day he sat in a corner weeping, and his mother who
came in asked: 'Why are you weeping so bitterly, my son?'

'My head aches,' he answered; 'it aches very badly.' And his mother
passed on, and left him alone.

In the evening he said to his wife: 'I have seen my daughter, in the
place where you told me you had drowned her. Instead, she lives at the
bottom of the lake, and has now grown into a young woman.'

'I don't know what you are talking about,' replied Thakane. 'I buried my
child under the sand on the beach.'

Then Masilo implored her to give the child back to him; but she would
not listen, and only answered: 'If I were to give her back you would
only obey the laws of your country and take her to your father, the
ogre, and she would be eaten.'

But Masilo promised that he would never let his father see her, and that
now she was a woman no one would try to hurt her; so Thakane's heart
melted, and she went down to the lake to consult the old woman.

'What am I to do?' she asked, when, after clapping her hands, the old
woman appeared before her. 'Yesterday Masilo beheld Dilah, and ever
since he has entreated me to give him back his daughter.'

'If I let her go he must pay me a thousand head of cattle in exchange,'
replied the old woman. And Thakane carried her answer back to Masilo.

'Why, I would gladly give her two thousand!' cried he, 'for she
has saved my daughter.' And he bade messengers hasten to all the
neighbouring villages, and tell his people to send him at once all the
cattle he possessed. When they were all assembled he chose a thousand of
the finest bulls and cows, and drove them down to the river, followed by
a great crowd wondering what would happen.

Then Thakane stepped forward in front of the cattle and sang:

Bring to me Dilah, Dilah the rejected one, Dilah, whom her father Masilo
cast out!

And Dilah came from the waters holding out her hands to Masilo and
Thakane, and in her place the cattle sank into