threes, on our search.

There was a half-moon low down in the heavens, and by its light we
searched--ah, yes, how we searched! We hunted hither and thither like
wild dogs questing a scent, beneath the dark shades of the forest trees,
where the beasts would howl dismally across our path, and the rustle of
huge serpents fleeing away in the brake would make our hearts leap--not
knowing what evil beings of the night were abroad. We searched over the
openness of the plain, and among the rugged rocks where we had found the
white _isanusi_. We searched indeed far out beyond any distance such a
little child could travel. But we searched in vain.

Not only through the night did we search, but well on into the next day.
Sometimes our hearts would chill as we saw something white, like a
skull or bones, lying away from us, but on drawing near it would prove
to be a stone, or perchance the skull of a kid or a buck, devoured by
wild animals. I sent runners to all the outlying kraals around us but
these returned bearing no news, and at last so thoroughly had we
searched that I was constrained to believe that it was as Nangeza had so
evilly suggested--the little one had wandered away from the kraal, and,
having lost herself, had been carried off or devoured by wild animals.

Now my own heart was sad and sore, for, _Nkose_, I loved this little
creature, with the eyes of heaven and hair like the sun, whom I had
saved from the spears of our young men, and who had come to look upon me
as her father; and, indeed, she would sometimes place her tiny white
hand upon my great dark one and laugh, and ask whether hers would grow
black, too, when she became old. And now I should see her no more; hear
her rippling, joyous laughter never again--ah, _Nkose_, my heart was
very sore. But my younger wives, Nxope and Fumana, they made terrible
moan, far more so than they would have made over child of their own
blood.

It came about, however, that some there might have even greater reason
to make moan, and that on behalf of themselves; for at day-dawn on the
third morning after the disappearance of Kwelanga an armed force stood
at the gate of my kraal, and in a loud voice summoned those within the
huts to come forth in the King's name.

Now, many of these, looking upon the armed men, felt themselves already
dead, deeming that Umzilikazi had sent to "eat up" my kraal, by reason
of the manner in which its trust had been fulfilled; nor was I myse