“The king would have done better to keep his regiments at home,” he said, “and fight it out with Hafela here, where he is well prepared.  Yonder the country is very wide, and broken, and it may well chance that the impi will miss that of Hafela, and then how can the king defend this place with a handful, should the prince burst upon him at the head of forty thousand men?  But who am I that I should give counsel for which none seek?”

“As God wills, so shall it befall,” answered Owen wearily; “but oh! the thought of all this bloodshed breaks my heart.  I trust that its beatings may be stilled before my eyes behold the evil hour.”

On the evening of that day Hokosa was baptised.  The ceremony took place, not in the church, for Owen was too weak to go there, but in the largest room of his house and before some few witnesses chosen from the congregation.  Even as he was being signed with the sign of the cross, a strange and familiar attraction caused the convert to look up, and behold, before him, watching all with mocking eyes, stood Noma his wife.  At length the rite was finished, and the little audience melted away, all save Noma, who stood silent and beautiful as a statue, the light of mockery still gleaming in her eyes.  Then she spoke, saying:—­

“I greet you, Husband.  I have returned from doing your business afar, and if this foolishness is finished, and the white man can spare you, I would talk with you alone.”

“I greet you, Wife,” answered Hokosa.  “Say out your say, for none are present save us three, and from the Messenger here I have no secrets.”

“What, Husband, none?  Do you ever talk to him of certain fruit that you ripened in a garden yonder?”

“From the Messenger I have no secrets,” repeated Hokosa in a heavy voice.

“Then his heart must be full of them indeed, and it is little wonder that he seems sick,” replied Noma, gibing.  “Tell me, Hokosa, is it true that you have become a Christian, or would you but fool the white man and his following?”

“It is true.”

At the words her graceful shape was shaken with a little gust of silent laughter.

“The wizard has turned saint,” she said.  “Well, then, what of the wizard’s wife?”

“You were my wife before I became Christian; if the Messenger permits it, you can still abide with me.”

“If the Messenger permits it!  So you have come to this, Hokosa, that you must ask the leave of another man as to whether or no you should keep your own wife!  There is no other thing that I could not have thought of you, but this I would never have believed had I not heard it from your lips.  Say now, do you still love me, Hokosa?”

“You know well that I love you, now and always,” he answered, in a voice that sounded like a groan; “as you know that for love of you I have done many sins from which otherwise I should have turned aside.”

“Grieve not over them, Hokosa; after all, in such a count as yours they will make but little show.  Well, if you love me, I hate you, though through your witchcraft your will yet has the mastery of mine.  I demand of you now that you should loose that bond, for I do not desire to become a Christian; and surely, O most good and holy man, having one wife already, it will not please you henceforth to live in sin with a heathen woman.”