royal blood. She drew near to the King, then halted, and, with hand upraised, uttered the “Bayéte” for no prostration or humbler mode of address was Umzilikazi wont to exact from her, the daughter of Tshaka the Terrible, by reason of her mighty birth. Thus she stood before the King, her head slightly thrown back, a smile of entire fearlessness shining from her large and lustrous eyes.

“Greeting, Daughter of the Great,” said Umzilikazi, speaking softly. “Hear you what these say?”

“I have heard them, son of Matyobane,” she answered.

“Ha! Yet they spoke low, and thou wert yet afar off,” went on the King craftily.

“What is that to me, Founder of a New Nation? Did I not hear the quiver of the spear-hafts of Mhlangana’s host long before it reached the Place of the Three Rifts?”

“The Place of the Three Rifts,” growled the King. “Hau! It seems to me we have heard overmuch of that tale. Here, however, is a new tale, not an old one. What of the Red Death? Do these dogs lie?” pointing to the grovelling Bakoni.

Lalusini glanced at them for a moment—the deepest scorn and disgust upon her royal features—the disgust felt by a real magician for those who would betray the mysteries of their nation’s magic, and I, gazing, felt I would rather encounter the most deadly frown that ever rested on the face of the King himself than meet such a look upon that of my inkosikazi, if directed against myself.

“They lie, Great Great One,” she answered shortly.

Then the King turned such a deadly look upon the crouching slaves that these cried aloud in their fear. They vociferated that they were telling the truth, and more—that they themselves had witnessed the operations of the Red Death among their own people; that Lalusini herself and her mother, Laliwa, had actually brought about the destruction of Tauane’s predecessor by its means, and that that of Tauane himself had been decreed—that it always meant the accession of a new ruler.

Now I, sitting near Umzilikazi, knew well what was passing in his mind. As he grew older he had become more and more sour and suspicious. Now he was thinking that he himself was destined to die in blood, even as that Great One, Tshaka, had died, that I, his second fighting induna, his favourite war-councillor, should succeed him, and so win back not only the seat of Matyobane, but the throne of Senzangakona for this 

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