“The commandant will be very grateful to you,” I said.  “But what are you going to do?”

“I do not know, Allan.  You see, I am not a lucky fellow like yourself with a wife waiting for me.  I think that perhaps I shall stop here a while.  I see a way of making a great deal of money out of these Zulus; and having lost everything upon that Delagoa Bay trek, I want money.”

“We all do,” I answered, “especially if we are starting in life.  So when it is convenient to you to settle your debts I shall be glad.”

“Oh! have no fear,” he exclaimed with a sudden lighting up of his dark face, “I will pay you what I owe you, every farthing, with good interest thrown in.”

“The king has just told me that is your intention,” I remarked quietly, looking him full in the eyes.  Then I walked on, leaving him staring after me, apparently without a word to say.

I went straight to the hut that was allotted to Retief in the little outlying guard-kraal, which had been given to us for a camp.  Here I found the commandant seated on a Kaffir stool engaged in painfully writing a letter, using a bit of board placed on his knees as a desk.

He looked up, and asked me how I had got on with Dingaan, not being sorry, as I think, of an excuse to pause in his clerical labours.

“Listen, commandant,” I said, and, speaking in a low voice, so as not to be overheard, I told him every word that had passed in the interviews I had just had with Dingaan, with Thomas Halstead, and with Pereira.

He heard me out in silence, then said: 

“This is a strange and ugly story, Allan, and if it is true, Pereira must be an even bigger scoundrel than I thought him.  But I can’t believe that it is true.  I think that Dingaan has been lying to you for his own purposes; I mean about the plot to kill you.”

“Perhaps, commandant.  I don’t know, and I don’t much care.  But I am sure that he was not lying when he said he meant to steal away my wife either for himself or for Pereira.”

“What, then, do you intend to do, Allan?”

“I intend, commandant, with your permission to send Hans, my after-rider, back to the camp with a letter for Marie, telling her to remove herself quietly to the farm I have chosen down on the river, of which I told you, and there to lie hid till I come back.”

“I think it needless, Allan.  Still, if it will ease your mind, do so, since I cannot spare you to go yourself.  Only you must not send this Hottentot, who would talk and frighten the people.  I am despatching a messenger to the camp to tell them of our safe arrival and good reception by Dingaan.  He can take your letter, in which I order you to say to your wife that if she and the Prinsloos and the Meyers go to this farm of yours, they are to go without talking, just as though they wanted a change, that is all.  Have the letter ready by dawn to-morrow morning, as I trust mine may be,” he added with a groan.