but seeing all.

"Have you seen Ngonyama?"

"The smoke ascends no longer, Inkose; but we have seen the signal
answered."

"How so?"

"Another smoke arose yet further off, and yet another, and beyond
that another, till the word of the fire-makers was passed back even
to the wide waters."

"Then it was not Ngonyama who made the fire."

"It was made by the enemy, Inkose."

"Have you sent out spies?"

"Of what use, lion's cub? Muata, the black one, hangs on their
trail, and when the time has come he will spring. Wow! They are
fools to come up by that path."

He went back deep in thought, and made up his mind to see the wise
woman again. So he passed down into the valley, crossed the river
to the new village built on a small flat-topped hill, and found the
chief's mother sitting before his hut.

"I want my brothers," he said at once.

"The valley is open--search for them. You are a chief; put the men
to the search. Why come to me?"

"Because you only know."

"Haw! If they are not in the valley they are out of the valley, and
once they are out they have broken the law. Who am I that you should
ask, since the law is made by the men?"

"Maybe, mother, they are not in the valley or out of the valley."

She threw a startled look at Compton, which he was keen to notice;
then, with an expression of puzzlement, she nodded her head.

"Your meaning is dark, lion's cub. See, the valley is kraaled in
like the goat-pen, and if the goats be not in the kraal they are
outside the kraal. As for Ngonyama, see where the women build his
hut against his coming."

"I see," said Compton. "Perhaps he was sent for by the chief, and
has gone a journey, for the enemy are on the move."

"That is plainer to me," she said quickly. "It must be so, for the
chief loves Ngonyama."

"Yes; that must be the reason. It lifts a load off my mind, mother."

"Ow aye I did not like to see your face clouded; and now you will
make medicine for me?"

"I will; bat there are a few things I require. I am young at this
work, mother, and cannot do without all the aids."

"Oh ay, I know," and she nodded her head with a fierce look in her
eyes. "The blood of a man, the heart of a kid, and the tongue of a
crocodile."

"No, no; a calabash of fat and a little wax. Only that."

"Your medicine is not like mine," she said musingly; "but I have it
in my mind now that the good white man used much fat in his
medicine."

She went into her hut, an