for the sun was sinking
without and the place was full of shadow; so I waited while a man might
count fifty, till our eyes could search the darkness. Then of a sudden I
threw the blanket from my face and looked into the yes of Umslopogaas.

"Look on me now, O Chief Bulalio, O Slaughterer, who once was named
Umslopogaas--look on me and say who am I?" Then he looked at me and his
jaw fell.

"Either you are Mopo my father grown old--Mopo, who is dead, or the
Ghost of Mopo," he answered in a low voice.

"I am Mopo, your father, Umslopogaas," I said. "You have been long in
knowing me, who knew you from the first."

Then Umslopogaas cried aloud, but yet softly, and letting fall the axe
Groan-Maker, he flung himself upon my breast and wept there. And I wept
also.

"Oh! my father," he said, "I thought that you were dead with the others,
and now you have come back to me, and I, I would have lifted the axe
against you in my folly. Oh, it is well that I have lived, and not died,
since once more I look upon your face--the face that I thought dead,
but which yet lives, though it be sorely changed, as though by grief and
years."

"Peace, Umslopogaas, my son," I said. "I also deemed you dead in the
lion's mouth, though in truth it seemed strange to me that any other man
than Umslopogaas could have wrought the deeds which I have heard of as
done by Bulalio, Chief of the People of the Axe--ay, and thrown defiance
in the teeth of Chaka. But you are not dead, and I, I am not dead. It
was another Mopo whom Chaka killed; I slew Chaka, Chaka did not slay
me."

"And of Nada, what of Nada, my sister?" he said.

"Macropha, your mother, and Nada, your sister, are dead, Umslopogaas.
They are dead at the hands of the people of the Halakazi, who dwell in
Swaziland."

"I have heard of that people," he answered presently, "and so has Galazi
the Wolf, yonder. He has a hate to satisfy against them--they murdered
his father; now I have two, for they have murdered my mother and my
sister. Ah, Nada, my sister! Nada, my sister!" and the great man covered
his face with his hands, and rocked himself to and fro in his grief.

Now, my father, it came into my thoughts to make the truth plain to
Umslopogaas, and tell him that Nada was no sister of his, and that he
was no son of mine, but rather of that Chaka whom my hand had finished.
And yet I did not, though now I would that I had done so. For I saw well
how great was the pride and how high was t