ays from now."

"We will do our best," said the girl, "but who is to dwell in the hut
when it is done?"

"Not you, be sure of that," he answered, roughly, "nor any black woman,
for I am weary of you, one and all. Listen: I go to-morrow with my
servants to fetch a chieftainess, a white lady, to rule over you, but if
any of you speak a word of her presence here you will pay for it, for I
shall turn you away to starve. Do you understand?"

"We hear you, husband," they replied, somewhat sullenly, for now they
understood that this new wife would be a mistress, and not a sister to
them.

"Then be careful that you do not forget my words, and--hearken--so soon
as you have cut a full load of hut-poles, let two of you carry them up
to the krantz yonder, where they are wanted, but be careful that no one
sees you going in or coming out."

"We hear you, husband," they said again, whereon Swart Piet turned and
rode away.

Now, although Zinti was said to be foolish, chiefly, as I think, because
he could not, or would not, work, yet in many ways he was cleverer than
most Kaffirs, and especially always did he desire to see new places, the
more so if they chanced to be secret places. Therefore, when he heard
Swart Piet command the women to carry the rods for the hidden krantz, he
determined that he would follow them, and this he did so skilfully that
they neither heard nor saw him. At first he wondered whither they could
be going, for they walked straight to the foot of what seemed to be an
unclimbable wall of rock more than a hundred feet high. On the face of
this rock, however, shrubs grew here and there like the bristles on the
back of a hog, and having first glanced round to see that no one was
watching them, the women climbed to one of these shrubs, which was
rooted in the cliff about the height of a man above the level of the
ground, and vanished so quickly that Zinti, who as watching, rubbed his
eyes in wonder. After waiting a while, however, he followed in their
steps to find that behind the shrub was a narrow cleft or crack such as
are often to be seen in cliffs, and that down this cleft ran a pathway
which twisted and turned in the rock, growing broader as it went, till
at last it ended in the hidden krantz. This krantz was a very beautiful
spot about three morgen, or six English acres, in extent, and walled all
round with impassable cliffs. Down the face of one of these cliffs fell
a waterfall forming a deep pool, out o