mpis with which it was tied, while
the sweat of terror ran down by face blinding me like tears. What would
I do if he saw the child? What if the child awoke and cried? I would
snatch the assegai from his hand and stab him! Yes, I would kill the
king and then kill myself! Now the mat was unrolled. Inside were the
brown leaves and roots of medicine; beneath them was the senseless bade
wrapped in dead moss.

"Ugly stuff," said the king, taking snuff. "Now see, Mopo, what a good
aim I have! This for thy medicine!" And he lifted his assegai to throw
it through the bundle. But as he threw, my snake put it into the king's
heart to sneeze, and thus it came to pass that the assegai only pierced
the outer leaves of the medicine, and did not touch the child.

"May the heavens bless the king!" I said, according to custom.

"Thanks to thee, Mopo, it is a good omen," he answered. "And now,
begone! Take my advice: kill thy children, as I kill mine, lest they
live to worry thee. The whelps of lions are best drowned."

I did up the bundle fast--fast, though my hands trembled. Oh! what if
the child should wake and cry. It was done; I rose and saluted the king.
Then I doubled myself up and passed from before him. Scarcely was I
outside the gates of the Intunkulu when the infant began to squeak in
the bundle. If it had been one minute before!

"What," said a soldier, as I passed, "have you got a puppy hidden under
your moocha, (1) Mopo?"

(1) Girdle composed of skin and tails of oxen.-ED.

I made no answer, but hurried on till I came to my huts. I entered;
there were my two wives alone.

"I have recovered the child, women," I said, as I undid the bundle.

Anadi took him and looked at him.

"The boy seems bigger than he was," she said.

"The breath of life has come into him and puffed him out," I answered.

"His eyes are not as his eyes were," she said again. "Now they are big
and black, like the eyes of the king."

"My spirit looked upon his eyes and made them beautiful," I answered.

"This child has a birth-mark on his thigh," she said a third time. "That
which I gave you had no mark."

"I laid my medicine there," I answered.

"It is not the same child," she said sullenly. "It is a changeling who
will lay ill-luck at our doors."

Then I rose up in my rage and cursed her heavily, for I saw that if she
was not stopped this woman's tongue would bring us all to ruin.

"Peace, witch!" I cried. "How dare you to speak thus