about her mouth, and while they watched
she laughed in her dreams. Then they looked at each other and went back
to their own chamber to spend the rest of the night as may be imagined.

Next morning when they emerged, very shaken and upset, the first person
they met was Ivana, who was waiting for them with their coffee.

"I have a message for you, Teacher and Lady. Never mind who sends it, I
have a message for you to which you will do well to give heed. Sleep no
more in this house on the night of full moon, though all other nights
will be good for you. Only the little Chieftainess Imba ought to sleep
in this house on the night of full moon."

So indeed it proved to be. No suburban villa could have been more
commonplace and less disturbed than was their dwelling for twenty-seven
nights of every month, but on the twenty-eighth they found a change of
air desirable. Once it is true the stalwart Thomas, like Ajax, defied
the lightning, or rather other things that come from above--or from
below. But before morning he appeared at the hut beneath the koppie
announcing that he had come to see how they were getting on, and shaking
as though he had a bout of fever.

Dorcas asked him no questions (afterwards she gathered that he had
been favoured with quite a new and very varied midnight programme); but
Tabitha smiled in her slow way. For Tabitha knew all about this business
as she knew everything that passed in Sisa-Land. Moreover, she laughed
at them a little, and said that _she_ was not afraid to sleep in the
mission-house on the night of full moon.

What is more, she did so, which was naughty of her, for on one such
occasion she slipped back to the house when her parents were asleep,
followed only by her "night-dog," the watchful Ivana, and returned
at dawn just as they had discovered that she was missing, singing and
laughing and jumping from stone to stone with the agility of her own pet
goat.

"I slept beautifully," she cried, "and dreamed I was in heaven all
night."

Thomas was furious and rated her till she wept. Then suddenly Ivana
became furious too and rated him.

Should he be wrath with the Little Chieftainess Imba, she asked him,
because the _Isitunzis_, the spirits of the dead, loved her as did
everything else? Did they not understand that the Floweret was unlike
them, one adored of dead and living, one to be cherished even in her
dreams, one whom "Heaven Above," together with those who had "gone
below," bu