ds and faces, seemed to impress them deeply, judging from
the remarks they made as they went away. Moreover I have reason to
believe the effect was salutary and lasting. The pomp and awe and
mystery of it appealed to them powerfully.

I had a reason for answering Ivuzamanzi, otherwise I would not have
seemed to wrangle with a man on the very steps of the scaffold. For, be
it remembered, he was the son of a powerful chief, and his words might
be in the highest degree dangerous to myself, and I had no hankering to
be marked out as the object of a vendetta. But I knew that natives have
a strong sense of justice, and the fact that I had once saved his life
being made known, would go far towards taking the sting out of his
denunciation.

"He feared," said a native voice at my elbow.

I turned quickly, though I knew the voice. It was that of Jan Boom.

"He feared," repeated the Xosa. "He feared death. His heart melted to
water within him. _Silungile_! Now am I avenged."

CHAPTER THIRTY THREE.

CONCLUSION.

For all the brave way in which Aida had taken her grisly experience--and
the full gruesomeness of her peril and narrow escape had been borne in
upon her, especially during the trial and the revelations it had
evolved--an impression had been left upon her mind which rendered the
life to which she had been looking forward, and its associations,
distasteful to her for the present. So after our marriage, which took
place a month later than the dark and tragical circumstances I have just
recorded, we decided to start for a prolonged tour of a year or more in
Europe.

That time was a halcyon time for me, falling in no whit short of what I
had always pictured it in anticipation. We did not hurry ourselves. We
took things easily, and thus were spared all the worry and flurry of
those who do not. In consequence we were able to enjoy to the full the
pick of the Old World in all that was beautiful or interesting, and
after my twenty years of up-country knocking about, and generally
roughing it, everything enjoyed in such association was both.

The farm I had bought for our joint occupation I was able to dispose of
at a trifling loss, and my trading store I sold at some profit; which
made things not merely as broad as they were long, as the saying goes,
but broader. But before we started on our tour it transpired that Edith
Sewin and Kendrew had managed to compass a very mutual excellent
understanding--it m