g from her
mouth, and looked at them as though she wondered; and we hoped that she
might let him fall. Then, hearing our cries, she turned and bounded away
towards the bush, bearing Umslopogaas in her mouth. We seized our spears
and followed; but the ground grew stony, and, search as we would, we
could find no trace of Umslopogaas or of the lioness. They had vanished
like a cloud. So we came back, and, ah! my heart was sore, for I loved
the lad as though he had indeed been my son. But I knew that he was
dead, and there was an end.

"Where is my brother?" cried Nada when we came back.

"Lost," I answered. "Lost, never to be found again."

Then the girl gave a great and bitter cry, and fell to the earth saying,
"I would that I were dead with my brother!"

"Let us be going," said Macropha, my wife.

"Have you no tears to weep for your son?" asked a man of our company.

"What is the use of weeping over the dead? Does it, then, bring them
back?" she answered. "Let us be going!"

The man thought these words strange, but he did not know that
Umslopogaas was not born of Macropha.

Still, we waited in that place a day, thinking that, perhaps, the
lioness would return to her den and that, at least, we might kill her.
But she came back no more. So on the next morning we rolled up our
blankets and started forward on our journey, sad at heart. In truth,
Nada was so weak from grief that she could hardly travel, but I never
heard the name of Umslopogaas pass her lips again during that journey.
She buried him in her heart and said nothing. And I too said nothing,
but I wondered why it had been brought about that I should save the life
of Umslopogaas from the jaws of the Lion of Zulu, that the lioness of
the rocks might devour him.

And so the time went on till we reached the kraal where the king's
business must be done, and where I and my wife should part.

On the morning after we came to the kraal, having kissed in secret,
though in public we looked sullenly on one another, we parted as those
part who meet no more, for it was in our thoughts, that we should never
see each other's face again, nor, indeed, did we do so. And I drew Nada
aside and spoke to her thus: "We part, my daughter; nor do I know when
we shall meet again, for the times are troubled and it is for your
safety and that of your mother that I rob my eyes of the sight of you.
Nada, you will soon be a woman, and you will be fairer than any woman
among our peopl