ng firearms.

As we passed among the huts, I greeted several men whom I knew
personally. Falkner the while staring curiously about him.

"I tell you what, Glanton. Some of these are devilish fine-looking
girls," he remarked. "Quite light coloured too, by Jove."

I rendered this for the benefit of the chief that my companion observed
that the women of the Abaqulusi were far better looking than any he had
ever seen in Zululand, which evoked a laugh from those men who heard,
and a delighted squeal from those of the sex thus eulogised. Then
Falkner committed his first blunder.

We had gained the chief's hut, and stooping down, I had entered the low
door first, Falkner following. When halfway through he drew back.

"Dash it all!" he exclaimed, "I've dropped my matchbox."

"Never mind. Come right through," I warned. "Don't stop on any
account."

But it was too late. He had already crawled back, and picked up the
lost article.

"Why what's the row?" he said, startled at my peremptory tone.

"Only that it's awful bad manners with them to stop halfway through a
door and back out again. It's worse, it makes a sort of bad _muti_.
It's a pity you did it."

"Oh blazes, how was I to know? Sort of ill luck, eh--evil eye and all
that kind of business? Well, you can put that right with them."

I tried to do this, incidentally explaining that he was a new arrival in
the country and could not talk with their tongue yet, and of coarse was
not familiar with their ways, that I hoped they would bear this in mind
during the time we should spend at the kraal. But although the chief
and his son took the incident in good part I could see they would much
rather it had not happened. As regarded the offender himself one thing
struck me as significant. Time was, and not so long ago either, when he
would have pooh-poohed it, as a silly nigger superstition. Now he
showed some little concern, which was a sign of grace.

_Tywala_, which is beer brewed from _amabele_, or native grown millet,
if fresh and cleanly made, is an excellent thirst quencher on a hot day,
and you never get it so well and cleanly made as in the hut of a Zulu
chief. Of this a great calabash was brought in, and poured out into
black bowls made of soft and porous clay.

"By Jove, Glanton," cut in Falkner, during an interval in our talk.
"This is something like. Why this jolly hut," looking round upon the
clean and cool interior with its hard polished fl