stranger, and looking up at him from under his pointed cap. "Are there any
more of you here in this country?"

"There are," said the stranger. Then he pointed with his hand into the
darkness. "There in a cave were two women. When you blew the cave up they
were left unhurt behind a fallen rock. When you took away all the grain,
and burnt what you could not carry, there was one basketful that you knew
nothing of. The women stayed there, for one was eighty, and one near the
time of her giving birth; and they dared not set out to follow the remnant
of their tribe because you were in the plains below. Every day the old
woman doled grain from the basket; and at night they cooked it in their
cave where you could not see their smoke; and every day the old woman gave
the young one two handfuls and kept one for herself, saying, 'Because of
the child within you.' And when the child was born and the young woman
strong, the old woman took a cloth and filled it with all the grain that
was in the basket; and she put the grain on the young woman's head and tied
the child on her back, and said, 'Go, keeping always along the bank of the
river, till you come north to the land where our people are gone; and some
day you can send and fetch me.' And the young woman said, 'Have you corn
in the basket to last till they come?' And she said, 'I have enough.' And
she sat at the broken door of the cave and watched the young woman go down
the hill and up the river bank till she was hidden by the bush; and she
looked down at the plain below, and she saw the spot where the kraal had
been and where she had planted mealies when she was a young girl--"

"I met a woman with corn on her head and a child on her back!" said Peter
under his breath.

"--And tonight I saw her sit again at the door of the cave; and when the
sun had set she grew cold; and she crept in and lay down by the basket.