e smoke-hole,
listening to every word that passed. It was a wicked thing to do, and,
moreover, the worst of omens, but there is little honour among women
when they learn that which others wish to hide away from them, nor,
indeed, do they then weight omens.

So having searched and found nothing, I spoke to Umslopogaas, my
fosterling, not knowing that death in a woman's shape lay on the hut
above us. "Hearken," I said, "you are no son of mine, Umslopogaas,
though you have called me father from a babe. You spring from a loftier
stock, Slaughterer."

"Yet I was well pleased with my fathering, old man," said Umslopogaas.
"The breed is good enough for me. Say, then, whose son am I?"

Now I bent forward and whispered to him, yet, alas! not low enough. "You
are the son of the Black One who is dead, yea, sprung from the blood of
Chaka and of Baleka, my sister."

"I still have some kinship with you then, Mopo, and that I am glad of.
Wow! who would have guessed that I was the son of the Silwana, of that
hyena man? Perhaps it is for this reason that, like Galazi, I love the
company of the wolves, though no love grows in my heart for my father or
any of his house."

"You have little cause to love him, Umslopogaas, for he murdered your
mother, Baleka, and would have slain you also. But you are the son of
Chaka and of no other man."

"Well, his eyes must be keen indeed, my uncle, who can pick his own
father out of a crowd. And yet I once heard this tale before, though I
had long forgotten it."

"From whom did you hear it, Umslopogaas? An hour since, it was known to
one alone, the others are dead who knew it. Now it is known to two"--ah!
my father, I did not guess of the third;--"from whom, then, did you hear
it?"

"It was from the dead; at least, Galazi the Wolf heard it from the dead
One who sat in the cave on Ghost Mountain, for the dead One told him
that a man would come to be his brother who should be named Umslopogaas
Bulalio, son of Chaka, and Galazi repeated it to me, but I had long
forgotten it."

"It seems that there is wisdom among the dead," I answered, "for lo!
to-day you are named Umslopogaas Bulalio, and to-day I declare you the
son of Chaka. But listen to my tale."

Then I told him all the story from the hour of his birth onwards, and
when I spoke of the words of his mother, Baleka, after I had told my
dream to her, and of the manner of her death by the command of Chaka,
and of the great fashion in which s