d I will pluck her. I know where she dwells. Yes,
just where the wagon she sleeps in stands in the line, for my spies have
told me, and I will give orders that whoever is killed, she is to be
spared and brought to me living. So perhaps you will meet this wife of
yours here, Macumazahn."

Now, at these ominous words, that might mean so much or so little, the
sweat started to my brow, and a shiver went down my back.

"Perhaps I shall and perhaps I shall not, O king," I answered. "The
world is as full of chances to-day as it was not long ago when I shot at
the sacred vultures on Hloma Amabutu. Still, I think that my wife will
never be yours, O king."

"Ow!" said Dingaan; "this little white ant is making another tunnel,
thinking that he will come up at my back. But what if I put down my heel
and crush you, little white ant? Do you know," he added confidentially,
"that the Boer who mends my guns and whom here we call 'Two-faces,'
because he looks towards you Whites with one eye and towards us Blacks
with the other, is still very anxious that I should kill you? Indeed,
when I told him that my spies said that you were to ride with the Boers,
as I had requested that you should be their Tongue, he answered that
unless I promised to give you to the vultures, he would warn them
against coming. So, since I wanted them to come as I had arranged with
him, I promised."

"Is it so, O king?" I asked. "And pray why does this Two-faces, whom we
name Pereira, desire that I should be killed?"

"Ow!" chuckled the obese old ruffian; "cannot you with all your
cleverness guess that, O Macumazahn? Perhaps it is he who needs the tall
white maiden, and not I. Perhaps if he does certain things for me, I
have promised her to him in payment. And perhaps," he added, laughing
quite loud, "I shall trick him after all, keeping her for myself,
and paying him in another way, for can a cheat grumble if he is
out-cheated?"

I answered that I was an honest man, and knew nothing about cheats, or
at what they could or could not grumble.

"Yes, Macumazahn," replied Dingaan quite genially. "That is where
you and I are alike. We are both honest, quite honest, and therefore
friends, which I can never be with these Amaboona, who, as you and
others have told me, are traitors. We play our game in the light, like
men, and who wins, wins, and who loses, loses. Now hear me, Macumazahn,
and remember what I say. Whatever happens to others, whatever you may
see, yo