their friend.

So this was the end of all my efforts to secure the safety and
well-being of that most unlucky pair. I wept when I thought of
it there in the darkness of the hut, for the candle had burned
out, and going on to my knees, put up an earnest prayer for the
welfare of their souls; also that I might be forgiven my folly in
leading them into such danger. And yet I did it for the best,
trying to judge wisely in the light of such experience of the
world as I possessed.

Now alas! when I am old I have come to the conclusion that those
things which one tries to do for the best one generally does
wrong, because nearly always there is some tricky fate at hand to
mar them, which in this instance was named Zikali. The fact is,
I suppose, that man who thinks himself a free agent, can scarcely
be thus called, at any rate so far as immediate results are
concerned. But that is a dangerous doctrine about which I will
say no more, for I daresay that he is engaged in weaving a great
life-pattern of which he only sees the tiniest piece.

One thing comforted me a little. If these two were dead I could
now leave Zululand without qualms. Of course I was obliged to
leave in any case, or die, but somehow that fact would not have
eased my conscience. Indeed I think that had I believed they
still lived, in this way or in that I should have tried not to
leave, because I should have thought it for the best to stay to
help them, whereby in all human probability I should have brought
about my own death without helping them at all. Well, it had
fallen out otherwise and there was an end. Now I could only hope
that they had gone to some place where there are no more
troubles, even if, at the worst, it were a place of rest too deep
for dreams.

Musing thus at last I dozed off, for I was so tired that I think
I should have slept although execution awaited me at the dawn
instead of another journey. I did not sleep well because of that
snoring female on the other side of the hut whose presence
outraged my sense of propriety and caused me to be invaded by
prophetic dreams of the talk that would ensue among those
scandalmongering Zulus. Yes, it was of this I dreamed, not of
the great dangers that threatened me or of the terrible loss of
my friends, perhaps because to many men, of whom I suppose I am
one, the fear of scandal or of being the object of public notice,
is more than the fear of danger or the smart of sorrow.

So the