sisted of a narrow
labyrinthine passage; other approaches there were, but known only to its
weird occupant, who had mechanical but secret means of his own of being
warned of any advance, even by the recognised way, some time before the
visitor or visitors should arrive at the gate.

This formidable stockade enclosed a space in which stood three huts,
circular, with low conical roofs of thatch, and in front of these
Shiminya was squatting. He had a large bowl in his hands, which he kept
turning from side to side, narrowly scrutinising its contents, which
smelt abominably, half muttering, half singing to himself the while. In
front, its head couched between its paws, dog-like, blinking its yellow
eyes, lay an animal. Yet it was not a dog, but represented the smaller
species of hyaena--the South African "wolf."

This brute looked grim and uncanny enough, but not more so than his
master. The latter was a native of small stature and very black hue,
with features of an aquiline, almost Semitic cast. But the glance of
his eye was baleful, cruel as that of a serpent, keen, rapacious as that
of a hawk; and while the muscular development of his frame was slight
almost to puniness, his sinister features showed that which must ever
dominate over mere brutal sinew and brawn, viz. Mind. Craft, guile,
cunning, illimitable patience, and dauntless courage all fought for the
mastery in the thin cruel features of the sorcerer.

His whole aspect differed as widely as possible from the pure-blood
Matabele, which is scarcely surprising, seeing that he could boast no
strain of that warrior race. He was, in fact, of the Amaholi, or slave
caste; but as among other and more powerful nations of both new and old
civilisation, Mind is bound to tell Shiminya--at the time we make his
acquaintance and for some years previously--was one of the highest in
the ranks of the mysterious hierarchy known to the natives as "Children
of the Umlimo."

The origin of the cultus of this sinister abstraction has never been
located with certainty. Its hierarchy was protected, if not encouraged,
by Lo Bengula and his warrior sire, probably out of three parts
political motive to a fourth superstitious; and now, at the period of
our story, when the dynasty and despotism of the Matabele kings had gone
down before the Maxims of the Chartered Company, the shadowy-sayings of
the Umlimo began to be sought out eagerly by the conquered race, and a
rosy time seemed