t gourd, perhaps you will give me a drink of it."

She flew to the bowl like a swallow, and next moment was kneeling at my
side and holding it to my lips with one hand, while with the other she
supported my head.

"I am honoured," she said. "I only came to the hut the moment before
you woke, and seeing you still lost in swoon, I wept--look, my eyes are
still wet [they were, though how she made them so I do not know]--for I
feared lest that sleep should be but the beginning of the last."

"Quite so," I said; "it is very good of you. And now, since your fears
are groundless--thanks be to the heavens--sit down, if you will, and
tell me the story of how I came here."

She sat down, not, I noted, as a Kafir woman ordinarily does, in a kind
of kneeling position, but on a stool.

"You were carried into the kraal, Inkoosi," she said, "on a litter of
boughs. My heart stood still when I saw that litter coming; it was no
more heart; it was cold iron, because I thought the dead or injured man
was--" And she paused.

"Saduko?" I suggested.

"Not at all, Inkoosi--my father."

"Well, it wasn't either of them," I said, "so you must have felt happy."

"Happy! Inkoosi, when the guest of our house had been wounded, perhaps
to death--the guest of whom I have heard so much, although by misfortune
I was absent when he arrived."

"A difference of opinion with your eldest mother?" I suggested.

"Yes, Inkoosi; my own is dead, and I am not too well treated here. She
called me a witch."

"Did she?" I answered. "Well, I do not altogether wonder at it; but
please continue your story."

"There is none, Inkoosi. They brought you here, they told me how the
evil brute of a buffalo had nearly killed you in the pool; that is all."

"Yes, yes, Mameena; but how did I get out of the pool?"

"Oh, it seems that your servant, Sikauli, the bastard, leapt into the
water and engaged the attention of the buffalo which was kneading you
into the mud, while Saduko got on to its back and drove his assegai down
between its shoulders to the heart, so that it died. Then they pulled
you out of the mud, crushed and almost drowned with water, and brought
you to life again. But afterwards you became senseless, and so lay
wandering in your speech until this hour."

"Ah, he is a brave man, is Saduko."

"Like others, neither more nor less," she replied with a shrug of her
rounded shoulders. "Would you have had him let you die? I think the
brave man was he w