the nest and leave it to
its mate and nature."

This we did, and there in the nest it stayed for some days, its mate
feeding it with flies as though it were still unfledged. After that they
vanished, both of them together, seeking some new home, nor did they
ever build again beneath our eaves.

"Would you speak with me, Sihamba?" I asked when this matter of the
swallows was done with.

"I would speak with the Baas, or with you, it is the same thing," she
answered, "and for this reason. I go upon a journey; for myself I have
the good black horse which the Baas gave me after I had ridden to warn
you in Tiger Kloof yonder, the one that I cured of sickness. But I
need another beast to carry pots and food and my servant Zinti, who
accompanies me. There is the brown mule which you use little because he
is vicious, but he is very strong and Zinti does not fear him. Will you
sell him to me for the two cows I earned from the Kaffir whose wife I
saved when the snake bit her? He is worth three, but I have no more to
offer."

"Whither do you wish to journey, Sihamba?" I asked.

"I follow my mistress to the dorp," she answered.

"Did she bid you follow her, Sihamba?"

"No! is it likely that she would think of me at such a time, or care
whether I come or go? Fear not, I shall not trouble her, or put her to
cost; I shall follow, but I shall not be seen until I am wanted."

Now I had made up my mind to gainsay Sihamba, not that I could find any
fault with her plan, but because if such arrangements are to be made, I
like to make them myself, as is the business of the head of the house. I
think Sihamba guessed this; at any rate she answered me before I spoke,
and that in an odd way, namely, by looking first at the swallow's nest,
then at the blooming bough of the peach tree, and lastly into the far
distances of air.

"It was the black crow that drove the hawk away," she said,
reflectively, as though she were thinking of something else, "though I
think, for my eyes are better than yours, that the hawk killed the crow,
or perhaps they killed each other; at the least I saw them falling to
the earth beyond the crest of the mountain."

At this I was about to break in angrily, for if there was one thing in
the world I hated it was Sihamba's nonsense about birds and omens and
such things, whereof, indeed, I had had enough on the previous night,
when she made that lump Jan believe that he saw visions in a bowl of
water. And yet I di