for his energy had
contracted fever and nearly been washed away in a flooded river.

Only one thing was lacking, a sufficient congregation to fill this fine
church, which secretly the Bishop, who was a sensible man, thought would
have been of greater value had it been erected in any of several
other localities that he could have suggested. For alas! the Christian
community of Sisa-Land did not increase. Occasionally Thomas succeeded
in converting one of Menzi's followers, and occasionally Menzi snatched
a lamb from the flock of Thomas, with the result that the scales
remained even neither going up nor down.

The truth was, of course, that the matter was chiefly one of race; those
of the Sisas in whom the Basuto blood preponderated became Christian,
while those who were of the stubborn Zulu stock, strengthened and
inspired by their prophet Menzi, remained unblushingly heathen.

Still Thomas did not despair. One day, he told himself, there would be a
great change, a veritable landslide, and he would see that church filled
with every Zulu in the district. Needless to say, he wished him no ill,
but Menzi was an old man, and before long it might please Providence to
gather that accursed wizard to his fathers. For that he was a wizard of
some sort Thomas no longer doubted, a person directly descended from the
Witch of Endor, or from some others of her company who were mentioned
in the Bible. There was ample authority for wizards, and if they existed
then why should they they not continue to do so? Since he could not
explain it, Thomas swallowed the magic, much as in his boyhood he used
to swallow the pills.

Yes, if only Menzi were removed by the will of Heaven, which really,
thought Thomas, must be outraged by such proceedings, his opportunity
would come, and "Menzi's herd," as the heathens were called in
Sisa-land, would be added to his own. The Bishop, it is true, was not
equally sanguine, but said nothing to discourage zeal so laudable and so
uncommon.

It was while his Lordship was recovering from the sharp bout of fever
which he had developed in a new and mosquito-haunted hut with a damp
floor that had been especially erected for his accommodation, that at
last the question of the re-building of the mission-house came to a
head, which it could not do while all the available local labour, to say
nothing of some hired from afar, was employed upon the church.

Thomas, it was true, wished to postpone it further, point