r, where he is. Now I hope that help
will find me, and that I may live a little while, because of a certain
vengeance which I would wreak."

"Speak not of vengeance, husband," she answered, "I, too, am near to
that land where the Slayer and the Slain, the Shedder of Blood and the
Avenger of Blood are lost in the same darkness. I would die with love,
and love only, in my heart, and your name, and yours only, on my lips,
so that if anywhere we live again it shall be ready to spring forth to
greet you. Yet, husband, it is in my heart that you will not go with me,
but that you shall live on to die the greatest of deaths far away from
here, and because of another woman. It seems that, as I lay in the
dark of this cave, I saw you, Umslopogaas, a great man, gaunt and grey,
stricken to the death, and the axe Groan-maker wavering aloft, and many
a man dead upon a white and shimmering way, and about you the fair faces
of white women; and you had a hole in your forehead, husband, on the
left side."

"That is like to be true, if I live," he answered, "for the bone of my
temple is shattered."

Now Nada ceased speaking, and for a long while was silent; Umslopogaas
was also silent and torn with pain and sorrow because he must lose the
Lily thus, and she must die so wretchedly, for one reason only, that the
cast of Faku had robbed him of his strength. Alas! he who had done many
deeds might not save her now; he could scarcely hold himself upright
against the rock. He thought of it, and the tears flowed down his face
and fell on to the hand of the Lily. She felt them fall and spoke.

"Weep not, my husband," she said, "I have been all too ill a wife to
you. Do not mourn for me, yet remember that I loved you well." And again
she was silent for a long space.

Then she spoke and for the last time of all, and her voice came in a
gasping whisper through the hole in the rock:--

"Farewell, Umslopogaas, my husband and my brother, I thank you for your
love, Umslopogaas. Ah! I die!"

Umslopogaas could make no answer, only he watched the little hand he
held. Twice it opened, twice it closed upon his own, then it opened for
the third time, turned grey, quivered, and was still forever!

Now it was at the hour of dawn that Nada died.

CHAPTER XXXV. THE VENGEANCE OF MOPO AND HIS FOSTERLING

It chanced that on this day of Nada's death and at that same hour of
dawn I, Mopo, came from my mission back to the kraal of the People of
the Axe,