woman and her deeds?" asked Panda.

"Only this, O King. Two nights before the child that is dead was taken
ill, I saw Mameena creep into the hut of the lady Nandie, I who was
asleep alone in a corner of the big hut out of reach of the light of the
fire. At the time the lady Nandie was away from the hut with her son.
Knowing the woman for Mameena, the wife of Masapo, who was on friendly
terms with the Inkosazana, whom I supposed she had come to visit, I did
not declare myself; nor did I take any particular note when I saw her
sprinkle a little mat upon which the babe, Saduko's son, was wont to
be laid, with some medicine, because I had heard her promise to the
Inkosazana a powder which she said would drive away insects. Only, when
I saw her throw some of this powder into the vessel of warm water that
stood by the fire, to be used for the washing of the child, and place
something, muttering certain words that I could not catch, in the straw
of the doorway, I thought it strange, and was about to question her when
she left the hut. As it happened, O King, but a little while afterwards,
before one could count ten tens indeed, a messenger came to the hut to
tell me that my old mother lay dying at her kraal four days' journey
from Nodwengu, and prayed to see me before she died. Then I forgot all
about Mameena and the powder, and, running out to seek the Princess
Nandie, I craved her leave to go with the messenger to my mother's
kraal, which she granted to me, saying that I need not return until my
mother was buried.

"So I went. But, oh! my mother took long to die. Whole moons passed
before I shut her eyes, and all this while she would not let me go; nor,
indeed, did I wish to leave her whom I loved. At length it was over, and
then came the days of mourning, and after those some more days of rest,
and after them again the days of the division of the cattle, so that in
the end six moons or more had gone by before I returned to the service
of the Princess Nandie, and found that Mameena was now the second wife
of the lord Saduko. Also I found that the child of the lady Nandie was
dead, and that Masapo, the first husband of Mameena, had been smelt out
and killed as the murderer of the child. But as all these things were
over and done with, and as Mameena was very kind to me, giving me gifts
and sparing me tasks, and as I saw that Saduko my lord loved her much,
it never came into my head to say anything of the matter of the powder