gly through her horny eyes.

"'She speaks truly now,' said one of those who stood near. 'Let the club
be, young man: he who owns it smites great blows indeed, but in the end
he dies by the assegai. None dare own the Watcher of the Fords.'

"'A good death and a swift!' I answered. And pondered a time, while
still the old woman watched me through her horny eyes. At length she
rose, 'La!, la!' she said, 'the Watcher is not for this one. This is but
a child, I must seek me a man, I must seek me a man!'

"'Not so fast, old wife,' I said. 'Will you lend me this club to hold in
my hand while I go to find the bones of your son and to snatch them from
the people of the ghosts?'

"'Lend you the Watcher, boy? Nay, nay! I should see little of you again
or of the good club either.'

"'I am no thief,' I answered. 'If the ghosts kill me, you will see me no
more, or the club either; but if I live I will bring you back the bones,
or, if I do not find them, I will render the Watcher into your hands
again. At the least I say that if you will not lend me the club, then I
will not go into the haunted place.'

"'Boy, your eyes are honest,' she said, still peering at me. 'Take the
Watcher, go seek the bones. If you die, let the club be lost with you;
if you fail, bring it back to me; but if you win the bones, then it is
yours, and it shall bring you glory and you shall die a man's death at
last holding him aloft among the dead.'

"So on the morrow at dawn I took the club Watcher in my hand and a
little dancing shield, and made ready to start. The old woman blessed me
and bade me farewell, but the other people of the kraal mocked, saying:
'A little man for so big a club! Beware, little man, lest the ghosts
use the club on you!' So they spoke, but one girl in the kraal--she is a
granddaughter of the old woman--led me aside, praying me not to go,
for the forest on the Ghost Mountain had an evil name: none dared walk
there, since it was certainly full of spirits, who howled like wolves. I
thanked the girl, but to the others I said nothing, only I asked of the
path to the Ghost Mountain.

"Now stranger, if you have strength, come to the mouth of the cave and
look out, for the moon is bright."

So Umslopogaas rose and crept through the narrow mouth of the cave.
There, above him, a great grey peak towered high into the air, shaped
like a seated woman, her chin resting upon her breast, the place where
the cave was being, as it were, on the