to inspire
her with the wild panic terror which the wizard had confidently reckoned
upon. Waking up amid such gruesome surroundings would, he calculated,
produce such a shock upon her nerves as to render her frantic with
terror, and this was one of the little refinements of cruelty he had
promised himself. But she had gone through too much real peril, had
looked on horrors too material to be scared by such mere bogeydom as a
few skulls and bones.

She lay for a little while longer thinking out the position. Though
naturally not a little anxious and a trifle uneasy, she was far from
realising the desperate nature of her position, and that the very man
she trusted in as protector and guide was an arch-rebel who had
instigated and participated in more than one treacherous and wholesale
murder. She supposed they had brought her here for the reason this man
had given--for better security--and that to-day he would guide her
safely to Sikumbutana.

To this end she rose. A snuffling noise outside the door of the hut
attracted her attention, then a low growl. Some kraal cur, was all the
thought she gave it. She opened the door and went outside. The sun was
well up, and the birds were twittering in the thorn thicket, but of
those who had brought her there she saw no sign. The ashes of the fire
over which Shiminya had squatted lay white and dead, but of himself and
the other there was no sign. But the animal she had heard was lying
across the entrance of the kraal. She surveyed it with some curiosity.
If this was a dog she had never seen one like it before. It was more
like the pictures she had seen of a hyaena.

She went back into the hut to put on her straw hat, for the sun was hot.
The fact of having the hat with her reminded her of the signal escape
she herself had had from the massacre which had overwhelmed the
Hollingworths. But that she had felt moved to take a stroll that
afternoon she would have shared their fate. Then she upbraided herself.
Was it not selfish to feel any sort of satisfaction under such
circumstances? Ah, but--life was life, and death was ghastly and
terrible--and she was alive.

As she came forth again the brute lying across the entrance opened its
yellow eyes and snarled. She called to it in a soothing tone, which
caused it to snarl louder. The sun waxed hotter and hotter, yet somehow
she preferred the shadeless glare to the dour interior of the hut. What
had become of the two nat