e you that offence. Now fulfil your oath.
Begone and leave us in peace."

Still Maduna hesitated.

"I must make report to the king," he said. "What is this white man to
you that I should spare him? I give you your life and your father's
life, not that of this white man who has tricked us. If he were your
father, or your brother, it would be otherwise. But he is a stranger,
and belongs to me, not to you."

"Maduna," she asked, "do women such as I am share the waggon of a
stranger? This man is more to me than father or brother. He is my
husband, and I claim his life."

"_Ow!_" said the spokesman of the audience, "we understand now. She is
his wife, and has a right to him. If she were not his wife she would not
be in his waggon. It is plain that she speaks the truth, though how she
came here we do not know, unless, as we think, she is a witch," and he
smiled at his own cleverness.

"Inkosi-kaas," said Maduna, "you have persuaded me. I give you the life
of that white fox, your husband, and I hope that he will not trick you
as he has tricked us, and set you to hoe rock instead of soil," and he
looked at Robert wrathfully. "I give him to you and all his belongings.
Now, is there anything else that you would ask?"

"Yes," replied Benita coolly, "you have many oxen there which you took
from the other Makalanga. Mine are eaten and I need cattle to draw
my waggon. I ask a present of twenty of them, and," she added by an
afterthought, "two cows with young calves, for my father is sick yonder,
and must have milk."

"Oh! give them to her. Give them to her," said Maduna, with a tragic
gesture that in any other circumstances would have made Benita laugh.
"Give them to her and see that they are good ones, before she asks our
shields and spears also--for after all she saved my life."

So men departed to fetch those cows and oxen, which presently were
driven in.

While this talk was in progress the great impi of the Matabele was
massing for the march, on the flat ground a little to the right of
them. Now they began to come past in companies, preceded by the lads
who carried the mats and cooking-pots and drove the captured sheep and
cattle. By this time the story of Benita, the witch-woman whom they
could not kill, and who had mysteriously flown from the top of the peak
into their prisoner's waggon, had spread among them. They knew also that
it was she who had saved their general from the Makalanga, and those who
had heard her