when we wondered, would tell us that he was getting
Ulcozi to teach him some of the native magic. Of course it seemed to us
absurd, but if we said anything of the sort father would get angry, so
the only thing was to let him go his own way. But when it came to his
going out at night with the witch doctor and coming back at all hours
thoroughly done up, why it seemed that the thing was going too far. He
has become very mysterious too. Once he let drop that Ukozi was going
to tell him all about the waterhole, and the strange thing that we saw
there, and then he became more angry still and vowed that he wouldn't be
interfered with--that here was a chance of learning something quite out
of the common, and he was going to take it whatever happened. Nothing
we can say or do seems to weigh with him in the least, and really, if it
didn't sound too absurd, I should say that this witch doctor had got him
right under his thumb. I asked Ivondwe about it quietly, but he was
very nice, and said that the old _Nkose_ was a wise man, yet there were
things that his wisdom had not yet reached, and now he would like to
learn them--that was all. There was nothing to trouble about. When he
had learnt what Ukozi could--or would--teach him--and that was not
much--then he would be the same as before. Now, Mr Glanton, you know
these people, and I ask you what does it all mean? My father is
altogether a changed man--how changed you would be the first to
recognise if you could see him. What, too, is the object; for Ukozi,
beyond getting something to eat, and tobacco now and then, does not seem
to ask for anything by way of payment, and I always thought the native
_isanusi_ was nothing if not acquisitive? But he is always here. For
want of a better expression he is getting upon my nerves, and not only
upon mine. It seems as if we were somehow being drawn within an
influence, and an influence the more weird and inexplicable that it is
through an agency that we should traditionally hold as something
inferior, and therefore quite absurd to take seriously. I mean a native
influence.

"Shall I risk disgracing myself for ever in your eyes by owning that I
am getting just a little bit frightened? Yes, frightened--I'm afraid
there's no other word for it--and the worst of it is I don't in the
least know what I am frightened of. It seems as if a something was
hanging over us--a something awful, and from which there is no escape.
You remembe