"I know not, lady," answered Zinti, for Sihamba was given the title of
Chieftainess among the natives who knew something of her birth, "but I
am sure that the sound was made by powder."

"Let us go and see," said Sihamba turning her horse.

For a while they rode on towards the place whence they had heard the
shot, till, suddenly, when they were near the cliff and in a little fold
of ground beyond the ridge of which ran the stream, Sihamba stopped and
whispered, "Be silent, I hear voices." Then she slipped from her horse
and crept like a snake up the slope of the rise until she reached its
crest, where at this spot stood two tufts of last season's grass, for
no fires had swept the veldt. From between these tufts, so well hidden
herself that unless they had stepped upon her body, none could have
discovered her, she saw a strange sight.

There beneath her, within a few paces indeed, for the ground sloped
steeply to the stream, men were passing. The first of these was white,
and he carried a white woman in his arms; the rest were Kaffirs, some of
whom wore karosses or cotton blankets, and some tattered soldiers' coats
and trousers, while all were well armed with "_roers_" or other guns,
and had powder flasks hung about their necks. Sihamba knew at once that
the white man was Swart Piet, and the woman in his arms her mistress,
Suzanne. She could have told it from her shape alone, but as it
happened, her head hung down, and the moonlight shone upon her face so
brightly that she could see its every feature. Her blood boiled in her
as she looked, for now she understood that her fears were just, and that
the Swallow whom she loved above everything in the world, had fallen
into the power of the man she hated. At first she was minded to follow,
and if might be, to rescue her. Then she remembered the pistol-shot, and