fail to take
that stronghold which has but one gate."

When the councillor had finished speaking, Sigwe called aloud:

"Lady Sihamba, I pray you come hither, and with you the lady Swallow,
your companion."

Then Sihamba, who was prepared for this event, for her hair was freshly
dressed and powdered with blue mica, wearing her little cape of fur and
the necklace of large blue beads, stepped from the screen of bush behind
which she had hidden. With her, and holding her hand, came Suzanne,
who covered the raggedness of her clothes beneath a splendid kaross
of leopards' skins that Sigwe had given her, down which her dark hair
flowed almost to her knee. A strange pair they made, the tall Suzanne in
the first bloom of her white beauty which had suffered nothing in their
journeying, and the small, quick-eyed, delicate-featured Kaffir woman.

"Who are these?" asked Sigwe of the council.

The old man looked at them and answered:

"Of the white lady we can say nothing except that she is very beautiful;
but, unless our eyes deceive us, she whom she holds by the hand is
Sihamba Ngenyanga, who was our chieftainess, and who left us because she
was angry."

"She is Sihamba and no one else," said Sigwe. "Sihamba come back to rule
you in the hour of need, and with her own tongue she shall tell you her
story and the story of the White Swallow who holds her by the hand."

So Sihamba began, and for an hour or more she spoke to them, for when
she chose this little woman had the gift of words, telling them all
about herself, and telling them also the story of the Swallow, and of
how she had brought good luck to the army of Sigwe, and how she was
destined to bring good luck wherever she made her home. At the end of
her speech she said:

"Now, my people, although I have wandered from you, yet my eyes, which
are far-seeing, have not been blind to your griefs, and in the hour of
your need I return to you, bringing with me the White Swallow to sojourn
among you for a while. Receive us if you will and be prosperous, or
reject us and be destroyed; to us it matters nothing, it is for you to
choose. But if we come, we come not as servants but as princes whose
word cannot be questioned, and should you accept us and deal ill with us
in any way, then your fate is sure. Ask the chief Sigwe here whether or
no the flight of the Swallow is fortunate, and whether or no there is
wisdom in the mouth of Sihamba, who is not ashamed to serve her."

Th