h instant acceptance.

"Let it be so," they cried with one voice, and in another minute
I was once more conducted from behind my tree and set down upon
the stool in front of the Council, with my back to the fire and
Zikali, "that his eyes might not charm me."

"Now, Watcher-by-Night," said Cetewayo, "although you have lied
to us in a certain matter, of this we do not think much, since it
is one upon which both men and women always lie, as every judge
will know. Therefore we still believe you to be an honest man,
as your dealings have proved for many years. As an honest man,
therefore, we beg you to give us a true answer to a plain
question. Was the Shape we saw before us just now a woman or a
spirit, and if a spirit, was it the ghost of Mameena, the
beautiful witch who died near this place nearly the quarter of a
hundred years ago, she whom you loved, or who loved you, which is
just the same thing, since a man always loves a woman who loves
him, or thinks that he does?"

Now after reflection I replied in these words and as
conscientiously as I could--

"King and Councillors, I do not know if what we all saw was a
ghost or a living person, but, as I do not believe in ghosts, or
at any rate that they come back to the world on such errands, I
conclude that it was a living person. Still it may have been
neither, but only a mere picture produced before us by the arts
of Zikali. So much for the first question. Your second is--was
this spirit or woman or shadow, that of her whom I remember
meeting in Zululand many years ago? King and Councillors, I can
only say that it was very like her. Still one handsome young
woman often greatly resembles another of the same age and
colouring. Further, the moon gives an uncertain light,
especially when it is tempered by smoke from a fire. Lastly,
memory plays strange tricks with all of us, as you will know if
you try to think of the face of any one who has been dead for
more than twenty years. For the rest, the voice seemed similar,
the beads and ornaments seemed similar, and the figure repeated
to me certain words which I thought I alone had heard come from
the lips of her who is dead. Also she gave me a strange message
from another who is dead, referring to a matter which I believed
was known only to me and that other. Yet Zikali is very clever
and may have learned these things in some way unguessed by me,
and what he has learned, others may have learned also. King an