“I say that I have repaid to you part of the debt I owe, but all of it I can never repay, for, Swallow, you have given me love which elsewhere has been denied to me.  Others have parents and brothers and sisters and husbands to love them; I have none of these.  I have only you who are to me father and mother and sister and lover.

“How then can I repay you who have taught this cold heart of mine to love, and have deigned to love me in return?  Oh! and the love will not die; no, no, it will live on when all else is dead, for although I am but a Kaffir doctoress, at times light shines upon my heart, and in that light I see many new things.  Yes, yes, I see that this life of ours is but a road, a weary road across the winter veldt, and this death but the black gate of a garden of flowers——­”

“Oh! why do you speak thus?” broke in Suzanne.  “Is this then our last farewell, and does your wisdom tell you that we part to meet no more?”

“I know not, Swallow,” answered Sihamba hastily, “but if it should be so I care nothing, for I am sure that through all your days you will not forget me, and that when your days are done I shall meet you at the foot of the death-bed.  Nay, you must not weep.  Now go swiftly, for it is time, and even in your husband’s love be mindful always that a woman can love also; yes, though she be but a dwarfed Kaffir doctoress.  Swallow—­Sister Swallow, fare you well,” and, throwing herself upon her breast, Sihamba kissed her again and again.  Then, with a strange strength, she thrust her from the hut, calling to Zinti to take charge of her and do as she had bidden him, adding that if he failed in this task she would blast his body and haunt his spirit.

Thus parted Sihamba, the Kaffir witch-doctoress, and my daughter Suzanne, whom she kept safe for nearly three years, and saved at last at the cost of her own life.  Yes, thus they parted, and for always in the flesh, since it was not fated that they should meet again in this world, and whether it has been permitted to Sihamba—­being a Kaffir, and no Christian—­to enter a better one is more than I can say.  In her case, however, I hope that she has found some hole to creep through, for although she was a black witch-doctoress, according to her knowledge she was a good woman and a brave one, as the reader will say also before he comes to the end of this story.

Outside the hut Zinti took Suzanne by the arm and led her through the mazes of the town to the open ground that lay between it and the mouth of the steep cleft which ran down to the slopes of the mountain.

All this space was crowded with people, for as yet they could not enter the cleft, which nowhere was more than ten feet wide, because it was filled with cattle, some alive and some dead, that, drawn by the smell of water beneath, had gathered as near to it as the stone walls which blocked the pass would allow.