fierce-faced executioners, and behind came the mob.

"Kill the evil-doer!" they shouted.

Masapo reached me. He flung himself on his knees before me, gasping:

"Save me, Macumazahn! I am innocent. Mameena, the witch! Mameena--"

He got no farther, for the slayers had leapt on him like hounds upon a
buck and dragged him from me.

Then I turned and covered up my eyes.

Next morning I left Nodwengu without saying good-bye to anyone, for what
had happened there made me desire a change. My servant, Scowl, and one
of my hunters remained, however, to collect some cattle that were still
due to me.

A month or more later, when they joined me in Natal, bringing the
cattle, they told me that Mameena, the widow of Masapo, had entered the
house of Saduko as his second wife. In answer to a question which I put
to them, they added that it was said that the Princess Nandie did
not approve of this choice of Saduko, which she thought would not be
fortunate for him or bring him happiness. As her husband seemed to be
much enamoured of Mameena, however, she had waived her objections, and
when Panda asked if she gave her consent had told him that, although she
would prefer that Saduko should choose some other woman who had not been
mixed up with the wizard who killed her child, she was prepared to take
Mameena as her sister, and would know how to keep her in her place.

CHAPTER XI. THE SIN OF UMBELAZI

About eighteen months had gone by, and once again, in the autumn of the
year 1856, I found myself at old Umbezi's kraal, where there seemed to
be an extraordinary market for any kind of gas-pipe that could be called
a gun. Well, as a trader who could not afford to neglect profitable
markets, which are hard things to find, there I was.

Now, in eighteen months many things become a little obscured in one's
memory, especially if they have to do with savages, in whom, after all,
one takes only a philosophical and a business interest. Therefore I may
perhaps be excused if I had more or less forgotten a good many of the
details of what I may call the Mameena affair. These, however, came back
to me very vividly when the first person that I met--at some distance
from the kraal, where I suppose she had been taking a country walk--was
the beautiful Mameena herself. There she was, looking quite unchanged
and as lovely as ever, sitting under the shade of a wild fig-tree and
fanning herself with a handful of its leaves.

Of course I