ging voice that Kaffirs
can command, which carries to an enormous distance.

"Awake, O Menzi! Come, O Doctor, and bring with you your _Dawa_. The
little Chieftainess is bitten in the finger by a hooded snake. The
Floweret withers! Imba dies!"

Almost instantly there was a disturbance in the kraal and Menzi
appeared, following by a man carrying a bag. He cried back in the same
strange voice:

"I hear. I come. Tie string or grass round the lady Imba's finger below
the bite. Tie it hard till she screams with pain."

Meanwhile the Christian nurse had rushed off over the crest of the
koppie to fetch Thomas and Dorcas, or either of them. As it chanced she
met them both walking to join Tabitha in her bower, and thus it came
about that they reached the place at the same moment as did old Menzi
bounding up the rocks like a _klipspringer_ buck, or a mountain sheep.
Hearing him, Thomas turned in the narrow gateway of the kraal and asked
wildly:

"What has happened, Witch-doctor?"

"This has happened, White-man," answered Menzi, "the Floweret has been
bitten by a hooded snake and is about to die. Look at her," and he
pointed to Tabitha, who notwithstanding the venom sucking and the grass
tied round her blackened finger, sat huddled-up, shivering and half
comatose.

"Let me pass, White-man, that I may save her if I can," he went on.

"Get back," said Thomas, "I will have none of your black magic practised
on my daughter. If she is to live God will save her."

"What medicines have you, White-man?" asked Menzi.

"None, at least not here. Faith is my medicine."

Dorcas looked at Tabitha. She was turning blue and her teeth were
chattering.

"Let the man do his best," she said to Thomas. "There is no other hope."

"He shan't touch her," replied her husband obstinately.

Then Dorcas fired up, meek-natured though she was and accustomed though
she was to obey her husband's will.

"I say that he shall," she cried. "I know what he can do. Don't you
remember the goat? I will not see my child die as a sacrifice to your
pride."

"I have made up my mind," answered Thomas. "If she dies it is so
decreed, and the spells and filth of a heathen cannot save her."

Dorcas tried to thrust him aside with her feeble strength, but big and
burly, he stood in the path like a rock, blocking the way, with the
stone entrance walls of the little pleasure-house on either side of him.

Suddenly the old Zulu, Menzi, became rather terrible; he