ull here, but after all,
it'll be a new experience I should think."

"Of course it will, Mr Thornhill, and a delightful one. So this is--
Edala." And the two girls kissed each other.

"How did you know my name?" said Edala, with a laugh.

"Why you don't suppose I haven't been `pumping' Mr Elvesdon all about
you during our most delightful drive out here, do you? Of course I
have." And then she began entering upon explanations as to the seeming
silence in answer to the telegram.

"Oh well, no matter. You're here now, anyhow," answered Thornhill
characteristically. And Evelyn Carden, looking up into the strong,
bearded, rather melancholy face, was deciding that she was going to like
its owner very much indeed; and Elvesdon superintending the process of
outspanning, was wondering whether these two girls were going to take to
each other; and Edala was thinking that they were.

But--somehow, with the faintest possible twinge of uneasiness, the
emphasis on those words `our most delightful drive' jarred on her.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

A TRAP--AND A TRAGEDY.

Four men were seated together within a hut. This hut was one of half a
dozen which constituted a small kraal, standing at the foot of a smooth
perpendicular cliff.

Two of these four we have already seen and two we have not. The former
were Babatyana and Nxala; of the latter, one was Nteseni, an influential
chief whose kraals adjoined those of Babatyana, while the fourth was
Zisiso, a witch-doctor of great, though secret repute. As was to be
expected they were plotting. It was night, and the other inhabitants of
the kraal, if such there were, slept.

"So my _muti_ was not strong enough, Nxala?" the witch-doctor was
saying. "_Au_! I have never known it like that before."

"He who is gone was old, my father, and his hand shook," was the answer.
"Who, then, may say as to the strength of the _muti_ when scattered
upon the floor of a hut? And now Ntwezi has the vessel that contained
it."

"That should have broken in pieces," murmured Zisiso.

"Yet it did not, for it reached not the ground."

"Ntwezi is ever suspicious," commented the old man.

"Ever suspicious. But there is one who serves him who would serve him
no longer. He will be here to-night."

"That is well. We will hear him."

This witch-doctor, Zisiso, was a mild, pleasant, genial-mannered old
man, to all outward appearance, especially when he came in contact with
Europeans. Then,