it except it be through the wisdom of Sihamba, which
they will not seek. Still I go, and in an hour I will return for your
answer, which you must make then, Suzanne, since whether you desire it,
or desire it not, fortune has given you to me. Have you no word for me
before I go?"

Now during all this long, half-insane harangue, Suzanne had sat quite
silent, making no reply at all, not even seeming to hear the demon, for
such he was, whose wicked talk defiled her ears. But when he asked her
whether she had nothing to say to him before he went, still looking not
at him, but beyond him, she gave him his answer in one word, the same
that she had used when she awoke from her swoon:

"_Murderer_."

Something in the tone in which she spoke, or perhaps in the substance
of that short speech, seemed to cow him; at the least he turned and left
the hut, and presently Sihamba heard him talking to the sentry without,
bidding him to keep close watch till he came back within an hour.

When Piet went out he left the door-board of the hut open, so that
Sihamba dared neither act nor speak, fearing lest the guard should hear
or see her through it. Therefore she still lay upon the top of the hut,
and watched through the smoke-hole. For a while Suzanne sat quiet upon
the bed, then of a sudden she rose from it, and shuffling across the hut
as well as her bound feet would allow her, she closed the opening with
the door-board, and secured it by its wooden bar. Next she returned
to the bed and, seating upon it, clasped her hands and began to pray,
muttering aloud and mixing with her prayer the name of her husband
Ralph. Ceasing presently, she thrust her hand into her bosom and drew
from it a knife, not large, but strong and very sharp. Opening this
knife she cut the thong that bound her ankles, and made it into a noose.
Then she looked earnestly first at the noose, next at the knife, and
thirdly at the candles, and Sihamba understood that she meant to do
herself to death, and was choosing between steel and rope and fire.

Now all this while, although she dared not so much as whisper, Sihamba
had not been idle, for with the blade of the assegai she was working
gently at the thatch of the smoke-hole, and cutting the rimpis that
bound it, till at last, and not too soon, she thought that it was wide
enough to allow of the passage of her small body. Then watching until
the guard leaned against the hut, so that the bulge of it would cut
her off f