o me, Noma, my dear little
Noma? Oh! I hear you, I hear you."

Now he shifted himself along the ground on his haunches some
paces to the right, and began to search about, groping with his
long fingers. "Where, where?" he muttered. "Oh, I understand,
further under the root, a jackal buried it, did it? Pah! how
hard is this soil. Ah! I have it, but look, Noma, a stone has
cut my finger. I have it, I have it," and from beneath the root
of some fallen tree he drew out the skull of a child and, holding
it in his right hand, softly rubbed the mould off it with his
left.

"Yes, Noma, it might be yours, it is of the right size, but how
can I be sure? What is it you say? The teeth? Ah! now I
remember. Only the day before you were taken I pulled out that
front tooth, did I not, and beneath it was another that was
strangely split in two. If this skull was yours, it will be
there. Come to the fire, Noma, and let us look; the moonlight is
faint, is it not?"

Back to the fire he shifted himself, and bending towards the
blaze, made an examination.

"True, Noma, true! Here is the split tooth, white as when I saw
it all those years ago. Oh! dear child of my body, dear child of
my spirit, for we do not beget with the body alone, Noma, as you
know better than I do to-day, I greet you," and pressing the
skull to his lips, he kissed it, then set it down in front of him
between himself and the fire with the face part pointing to the
king, and burst into one of his eerie and terrible laughs.

A low moan went up from his audience, and I felt the skin of
Goza, who had shrunk against me, break into a profuse sweat.
Then suddenly Zikali's voice changed one more and became hard and
businesslike, if I may call it so, similar to that of other
professional doctors.

"You have sent for me, O King, as those who went before you have
sent when great things were about to happen. What is the matter
on which you would speak to me?"

"You know well, Opener of Roads," answered Cetewayo, rather
shakily I thought. "The matter is one of peace or war. The
English threaten me and my people and make great demands on me;
amongst others that the army should be disbanded. I can set them
all out if you will. If I refuse to do as they bid me, then
within a few days they will invade Zululand; indeed their
soldiers are already gathered at the drifts."

"It is not needful, King," answered Zikali, "since I know what
all know, neither more n