ing the very blue of
heaven. As I gazed at it with that little girl I felt my whole
heart lifted up with an indescribable emotion, and for a moment
great and wonderful thoughts seemed to break upon my mind, even
as the arrows of the setting sun were breaking upon Kenia's snows.
Mr Mackenzie's natives call the mountain the 'Finger of God',
and to me it did seem eloquent of immortal peace and of the pure
high calm that surely lies above this fevered world. Somewhere
I had heard a line of poetry,

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever,

and now it came into my mind, and for the first time I thoroughly
understood what it meant. Base, indeed, would be the man who
could look upon that mighty snow-wreathed pile -- that white
old tombstone of the years -- and not feel his own utter insignificance,
and, by whatever name he calls Him, worship God in his heart.
Such sights are like visions of the spirit; they throw wide
the windows of the chamber of our small selfishness and let in
a breath of that air that rushes round the rolling spheres, and
for a while illumine our darkness with a far-off gleam of the
white light which beats upon the Throne.

Yes, such things of beauty are indeed a joy for ever, and I can
well understand what little Flossie meant when she talked of
Kenia as her companion. As Umslopogaas, savage old Zulu that
he was, said when I pointed out to him the peak hanging in the
glittering air: 'A man might look thereon for a thousand years
and yet be hungry to see.' But he gave rather another colour
to his poetical idea when he added in a sort of chant, and with
a touch of that weird imagination for which the man was remarkable,
that when he was dead he should like his spirit to sit upon that
snow-clad peak for ever, and to rush down the steep white sides
in the breath of the whirlwind, or on the flash of the lightning,
and 'slay, and slay, and slay'.

'Slay what, you old bloodhound?' I asked.

This rather puzzled him, but at length he answered --

'The other shadows.'

'So thou wouldst continue thy murdering even after death?' I said.

'I murder not,' he answered hotly; 'I kill in fair fight. Man
is born to kill. He who kills not when his blood is hot is a
woman, and no man. The people who kill not are slaves. I say
I kill in fair fight; and when I am "in the shadow", as you white
men say, I hope to go on killing in fair fight. May my shadow
be accursed and chilled to the bone for ever if it s