have given you, as a young lover sometimes wears a lock of hair cut from
the head of some fool-girl that he thinks is fond of him. It will bring
you safety and luck, Macumazahn, which, for the most part, is more than
the lock of hair does to the lover. Oh! it is a strange world, full of
jest to those who can see the strings that work it. I am one of them,
and perhaps, Macumazahn, you are another, or will be before all is
done--or begun.

"Good-night, and good fortune to you on your journeyings, and,
Macumazahn, although you are so fond of women, be careful not to fall in
love with that white Queen, because it would make others jealous; I mean
some who you have lost sight of for a while, also I think that being
under a curse of her own, she is not one whom you can put into your
sack. _Oho! Oho-ho!_ Slave, bring me my blanket, it grows cold, and my
medicine also, that which protects me from the ghosts, who are thick
to-night. Macumazahn brings them, I think. _Oho-ho!_"

I turned to depart but when I had gone a little way Zikali called me
back again and said, speaking very low,

"When you meet this Umslopogaas, as you will meet him, he who is called
the Woodpecker and the Slaughterer, say these words to him,

"'A bat has been twittering round the hut of the Opener-of-Roads, and
to his ears it squeaked the name of a certain Lousta and the name of a
woman called Monazi. Also it twittered another greater name that may not
be uttered, that of an elephant who shakes the earth, and said that this
elephant sniffs the air with his trunk and grows angry, and sharpens his
tusks to dig a certain Woodpecker out of his hole in a tree that grows
near the Witch Mountain. Say, too, that the Opener-of-Roads thinks that