I do with this?" she asked.

"You must find means to sprinkle it upon your sister's food, and
thereafter your husband shall come to hate even the sight of her."

"But will he come to love me again?"

Hokosa shrugged his shoulders.

"I know not," he answered; "that is for you to see to. Yet this is sure,
that if a tree grows up before the house of a man, shutting it off from
the sunlight, when that tree is cut down the sun shines upon his house
again."

"It is nothing to the sun on what he shines," said the woman.

"If the saying does not please you, then forget it. I promise you this
and no more, that very soon the man shall cease to turn to your rival."

"The medicine will not harm her?" asked the woman doubtfully. "She has
worked me bitter wrong indeed, yet she is my sister, whom I nursed
when she was little, and I do not wish to do her hurt. If only he will
welcome me back and treat me kindly, I am willing even that she should
dwell on beneath my husband's roof, bearing his children, for will they
not be of my own blood?"

"Woman," answered Hokosa impatiently, "you weary me with your talk. Did
I say that the charm would hurt her? I said that it would cause your
husband to hate the sight of her. Now begone, taking or leaving it, and
let me rest. If your mind is troubled, throw aside that medicine, and go
soothe it with such sights as you saw last night."

On hearing this the woman sprang up, hid away the poison in her hair,
and taking her basket of fruit, passed from the kraal as secretly as she
had entered it.

"Why did you give her death-medicine?" asked Noma of Hokosa, as he stood
staring after her. "Have you a hate to satisfy against the husband or
the girl who is her rival?"

"None," he answered, "for they have never crossed my path. Oh, foolish
woman! cannot you read my plan?"

"Not altogether, Husband."

"Listen then: this woman will give to her sister a medicine of which in
the end she must die. She may be discovered or she may not, but it is
certain that she will be suspected, seeing that the bitterness of the
quarrel between them is known. Also she will give to the Messenger
certain fruits, after eating of which he will be taken sick and in due
time die, of just such a disease as that which carries off the woman's
rival. Now, if any think that he is poisoned, which I trust none will,
whom will they suppose to have poisoned him, though indeed they can
never prove the crime?"

"The plan is c