the fastenings, sullenly
growling. Rising, the wizard followed, and, pushing back the animal,
crept into the hut, and slapped the door to in its jaws. At his
appearance the low moaning rose again, and in its note was the very
extremity of pain and fear.

It proceeded from a long dark form lying on the ground, which the eyes,
becoming accustomed to the semi-light of the interior, would have no
hesitation in pronouncing as human. Further investigation would reveal
it a female form, securely bound and lashed to a pole; a female form
too, dowered with no small share of symmetry and comeliness. The face,
when undistorted by pain and terror, must have been a pleasing one in
the extreme.

"Ah--ah, Nompiza!" chuckled the wizard, rubbing his hands together.
"The children of Umlimo have pretty houses, do they not--pretty houses?"
And he glanced gleefully around his horrible den.

For this is just what it was. Human skulls and bones decked the
plastered wall, but the most dreadful object of all was the whole skin
of the head and face of a man--of a white man too, with a long heavy
beard. This awful object glowered down in the semi-gloom, a gruesome
expression of pain in the pucker of the parchment-like hide. Great
snake-skins depended from the roof--the heads artfully stuffed, and the
attitudes arranged to simulate life; and many a horrid object,
suggestive of torture and death, was disposed around.

"A pretty house, Nompiza--ah--ah--a pretty house, is it not?" chuckled
Shiminya, leering down into the young woman's face. "And thou hast only
to speak one word to be taken out of it. Yet I wonder not at thy
refusal."

"I will not speak it, Shiminya," she replied, with some fire of spirit.
"The rattle of these old bones has no terror for me. And if thou
harmest me further, there are those who will avenge me, child of the
Umlimo or not."

For all answer the wizard laughed softly but disdainfully. Then
reaching to the door, he opened it. The wolf leaped in, snarling.

"See now, thou obstinate Nompiza," he went on, restraining the brute
with a flourish of a large stick painted red, before which it cowered
back. "This is Lupiswana--no ordinary wolf. Whoever this one bites
becomes _tagati_, and will be hunted through the night by him after
death, until they can escape only by riding on him as the white men ride
their horses. Then, if they fall off, they are hunted again night after
night--for ever and ever. Ha!"