ily. Then it was taken to those outside.

"What is this that my ears hear?" asked Zikali when Nombe and the
others had gone, "that the White Dogs are on the spoor of the
Black Bull?"

Cetewayo nodded heavily, and answered--

"My impis were broken to pieces on the plain of Ulundi; the
cowards ran from the bullets as children run from bees. My
kraals are burnt and I, the King, with but a faithful remnant fly
for my life. The prophecy of the Black One has come true. The
people of the Zulus are stamped flat beneath the feet of the
great White People."

"I remember that prophecy, O King. Mopo told it to me within an
hour of the death of the Black One when he gave me the little
red-handled assegai that he snatched from the Black One's hand to
do the deed. It makes me almost young again to think of it,
although even then I was old," replied Zikali in a dreamy voice
like one who speaks to himself.

Hearing him from under my kaross I bethought me that he had
really grown old at last, who for the moment evidently forgot the
part which this very assegai had played a few months before in
the Vale of Bones. Well, even the greatest masters make such
slips at times when their minds are full of other things. But if
Zikali forgot, Cetewayo and his councillors remembered, as I
could see by the look of quick intelligence that flashed from
face to face.

"So! Mopo the murderer, he who vanished from the land after the
death of my uncle Dingaan, gave you the little red assegai, did
he, Opener of Roads! And but a few months ago that assegai,
which old Sigananda knew again, thrown by the hand of the
Inkosazana-y-Zulu, drew blood from my body after the white man,
Macumazahn, had severed its shaft with his bullet. Now tell me,
Opener of Roads, how did it pass from your keeping into that of
the spirit Nomkubulwana?"

At this question I distinctly saw a shiver shake the frame of
Zikali who realized too late the terrible mistake he had made.
Yet as only the great can do, he retrieved and even triumphed
over his error.

"Oho-ho!" he laughed, "who am I that I can tell how such things
happen? Do you not know, O King, that the Spirits leave what
they will and take what they will, whether it be but a blade of
grass, or the life of a man"--here he looked at Cetewayo--"or
even of a people? Sometimes they take the shadow and sometimes
the substance, since spirit or matter, all is theirs. As for the
little assegai, I lost it year