and--what does it all mean,
Macumazahn?"

"Very little, as I think, Umslopogaas, except that this queen has powers
to which those of Zikali are as nothing, and can cause visions to float
before the eyes of men. For know that such things as you saw, I saw, and
in them those whom I have loved also seemed to take no thought of me
but only to be concerned with each other. Moreover when I awoke and told
this to the queen who is called She-who-commands, she laughed at me as
she did at you, and said that it was a good lesson for my pride who in
that pride had believed that the dead only thought of the living. But
I think that the lesson came from her who wished to humble us,
Umslopogaas, and that it was her mind that shaped these visions which we
saw."

"I think so too, Macumazahn, but how she knew of all the matters of your
life and mine, I do not know, unless perchance Zikali told them to her,
speaking in the night-watches as wizards can."

"Nay, Umslopogaas, I believe that by her magic she drew our stories out
of our own hearts and then set them forth to us afresh, putting her own
colour on them. Also it may be that she drew something from Hans, and
from Goroko and the other Zulus with you, and thus paid us the fee that
she had promised for our service, but in lung-sick oxen and barren cows,
not in good cattle, Umslopogaas."

He nodded and said,

"Though at the time I seemed to go mad and though I know that women are
false and men must follow where they lead them, never will I believe
that my brother, the woman-hater, and Nada are lovers in the land below
and have there forgotten me, the comrade of one of them and the husband
of the other. Moreover I hold, Macumazahn, that you and I have met with
a just reward for our folly.

"We have sought to look through the bottom of the grave at things which
the Great-Great in Heaven above did not mean that men should see, and
now that we have seen we are unhappier than we were, since such dreams
burn themselves upon the heart as a red-hot iron burns the hide of an
ox, so that the hair will never grow again where it has been and the
hide is marred.

"To you, Watcher-by-Night, I say, 'Content yourself with your watching
and whatever it may bring to you in fame and wealth.' And to myself I
say, 'Holder of the Axe, content yourself with the axe and what it may
bring to you in fair fight and glory'; and to both of us I say, 'Let
the Dead sleep unawakened until we go to join them,