man over a section
of the Baca tribe of Kafirs. The mounted policeman who had accompanied
me let his tired horse fall in a particularly bad drift, thus laming
the animal, and had had to remain behind in consequence. Thus I was
alone, but this circumstance did not trouble me, because my horse was
fresh, and I knew the country well.

Numjala is a roan of parts; he must be well over sixty years of age,
but his eye is bright and his wit is keen. He is well off, for a
native, and very hospitable.

The moon being new, her pale crescent sank quickly after the sun, but
the sky was perfectly clear and the stars more than ordinarily bright.
To reach home I had about twelve miles to ride, that is, by taking a
short cut along footpaths; along the main road the distance was nearer
twenty.

Numjala was very anxious that I should spend the night at his kraal,
and offered, would I agree to remain, to kill a juicy looking kid and
roast it for supper. I had, however, promised my wife to return by
midnight, and I feared she might be uneasy were I not to do so; I
therefore declined the invitation.

"Does your horse lead well?" asked Numjala.

"Not particularly," I replied; "why do you ask?"

"You say you are going by the footpath past the Ghoda bush?"

"Yes."

"Unless your horse leads well, you will never get him past the Ghoda
to-night, this being the night of the New Moon. You will certainly
never ride him past."

The Ghoda bush is a narrow strip of forest running down the side of a
steep mountain which forms one side of a valley, the other side being
formed of a perpendicular cliff, at the foot of which a stream brawls.
The strip of forest does not quite reach the stream, a grassy glade,
about twenty-five yards in width, lying between. Over this glade the
footpath leads. The Ghoda is about a mile from Numjala's kraal, and
just beyond it is the drift over the stream.

"What has the Moon to do with it?" I asked.

"That is a hard question. I only know that no horse can be ridden past
the Ghoda after sundown when the Moon is new."

"Look here, Numjala," I said reprovingly, "a man of your intelligence
ought to be ashamed of even pretending to believe such a thing. Why
this is worse than what you told me about the grass not growing at the
spot where Ncapayi and his men were killed by the Pondos."

"Is it?"

(Ncapayi, Great Chief of the Baca tribe, with many hundreds of his
followers, was killed in 1845 in a battle fought w