Halakazi, but a very beautiful
girl. So he called to the man to let her alone and not to touch her,
for the order was that no women should be killed. But the soldier, being
made with the lust of fight, shouted that maid or man she should die,
and slew her. Thereon, he--Galazi--in his wrath ran up and smote the man
with the Watcher and killed him also, and he prayed that he had done no
wrong.

"You have done well, my brother," said Umslopogaas. "Come now, some of
you, and let us look at this dead girl. Perhaps it is the Lily, and if
so that is unlucky for us, for I do not know what tale we shall tell to
Dingaan of the matter."

So the captains went with Umslopogaas and Galazi, and came to the spot
where the girl had been laid, and by her the man of the People of the
Axe.

"All is as the Wolf, my brother, has told," said Umslopogaas, waving
the torch in his hand over the two who lay dead. "Here, without a doubt,
lies she who was named the Lily, whom we came to win, and by her that
fool who slew her, slain himself by the blow of the Watcher. An ill
sight to see, and an ill tale for me to tell at the kraal of Dingaan.
Still, what is is, and cannot be altered; and this maid who was the
fairest of the fair is now none to lovely to look on. Let us away!" And
he turned swiftly, then spoke again, saying:--

"Bind up this dead girl in ox hides, cover her with salt, and let her be
brought with us." And they did so.

Then the captains said: "Surely it is so, my father; now it cannot be
altered, and Dingaan must miss his bride." So said they all except that
man who had been captain of the guard when Umslopogaas and Galazi and
another passed through the archway. This man, indeed, said nothing, yet
he was not without his thoughts. For it seemed to him that he had seen
three pass through the archway, and not two. It seemed to him, moreover,
that the kaross which the third wore had slipped aside as she pressed
past him, and that beneath it he had seen the shape of a beautiful
woman, and above it had caught the glint of a woman's eye--an eye full
and dark, like a buck's.

Also, this captain noted that Bulalio called none of the captives to
swear to the body of the Lily maid, and that he shook the torch to and
fro as he held it over her--he whose hand was of the steadiest. All of
this he kept in his mind, forgetting nothing.

Now it chanced afterwards, on the homeward march, my father, that
Umslopogaas had cause to speak angrily