h all the dignity of manner which characterized his royal brother,
yet there was a sinister expression ever lurking in his face--a cruel
droop in the corner of the mouth.

"Greeting, Nyonyoba. And is it good once more to behold a white face?"
said the chief, a veiled irony lurking beneath the outward geniality of
his tone.

"To behold the face of a friend once more is always good, Branch of a
Royal Tree," returned Laurence, sitting down among the group to take
snuff.

"Even when it is that of one risen from the dead?"

"But here it was not so, Ndabezita. My 'Spider' told me that these were
all the time alive," rejoined Laurence, with mendacity on a truly
generous scale.

"Ha! thy Spider? Yet thou art not of the People of the Spider."

"But I bear the sign," touching his breast. "There are many things made
clear to me, which may or may not be set forward in the light of all at
the fall of the second moon. Farewell now, Son of the Great."

The start of astonishment, the murmur which ran round the group, was not
lost upon him. It was all confirmatory of what he had heard. And then,
as he walked back to his tent in Silawayo's kraal, it occurred to
Laurence that he had probably made a false move. Nondwana, who, of
course, was not ignorant of his daughter's partiality, would almost
certainly decide that Lindela had betrayed the secret and sinister
intent to its unconscious object; and in that event, how would it fare
with her? He felt more than anxious. The king might take long in
deciding whether to restore his property or not, and etiquette forbade
him to refer to the matter again--at any rate for some time to come.
That Nondwana might demand too much _lobola_, or possibly refuse it
altogether as coming from him, was a contingency which, strange to say,
completely escaped Laurence's scheming mind.

"Greeting, Nyonyoba. Thy thoughts are deep--ever deep."

The voice, soft, rich, bantering, almost made him start as he raised his
eyes, to meet the glad laughing ones of the object of his thoughts at
that moment, the chief's daughter.

"What do you here, wandering alone, Lindela?" he said.

"Ha--ha! Now you did well to say my name like that--for--does it not
answer your question, 'to wait, to watch for'? And what is meant for two
ears is not meant for four or six. I have news, but it is not good."

They were standing in the dip of the path, where a little runlet coursed
along between high bush-fringed banks, and t