servant, ran to her, cursing and weeping with rage, and helped her to
her feet. For a while she stood saying nothing, only wiping her face, as
though filth had bespattered it, with the sun _kapje_ which had fallen
from her head, and her face was whiter than the white cap. At last she
spoke in a hoarse voice:

"Loose that woman," she said, "who has cost me my honour."

They obeyed her, and snatching up her skin rug Sihamba turned and fled
swiftly down the valley. Then Suzanne went to her horse, but before she
mounted it she looked Swart Piet straight in the eyes. At the time
he was following her, begging her not to be angry at a joke, for his
madness was satisfied for a while and had left him. But she only looked
in answer, and there was something so terrible to him in the dark eyes
of this young unfriended girl that he shrank back, seeing in them,
perhaps, the shadow of fate to come. Then Suzanne rode away, and Swart
Piet, having commanded his ruffians to fire the huts of Sihamba, and to
collect her people, goods, and cattle, went away also.

Just at the mouth of the valley something stirred in a bush, causing
the horse to start, so that Suzanne, who was thinking of other things,
slipped from it to the ground. Next moment she saw that it was Sihamba,
who knelt before her, kissing her feet and the hem of her robe.

"Rise," she said kindly; "what has been cannot be helped, and at least
it was no fault of yours."

"Nay, Swallow," said Sihamba, for I think I have said that was the
name which the natives had given to Suzanne from childhood, I believe,
because of the grace of her movements and her habit of running swiftly