particular tale upon which she was engaged, by a strange coincidence,
was that from the Acts which narrates how St. Paul was bitten by a viper
upon the Island of Melita, and how he shook it off into the fire and
took no hurt.

"He must have been like Menzi," said Ivana, who was present, whereon
Tabitha's other attendant, who was also with her as it was daytime,
started an argument, for being a Christian she was no friend to Menzi,
whom she called a "dirty old witch-doctor."

Tabitha, who was used to these disputations, listened smiling, and while
she listened amused herself by trying to thrust a stone into a hole in
the side of her summer-house, which was formed by one of the original
walls of the old kraal.

Presently she uttered a scream, and snatched her arm out of the hole. To
it, or rather to her hand, was hanging a great hooded snake of the cobra
variety such as the Boers call _ringhals_. She shook it off, and the
reptile, after sitting up, spitting, hissing and expanding its hood,
glided back into the wall. Tabitha sat still, staring at her lacerated
finger, which Ivana seized and sucked.

Then, bidding one of the oldest of the children to take her place
and continue sucking, Ivana ran to a high rock a few yards away which
overlooked Menzi's kraal, that lay upon a plain at a distance of about a
quarter of a mile, and called out in the low, ringing voice that Kaffirs
can command, which carries to an enormous distance.

"Awake, O Menzi! Come, O Doctor, and bring with you your _Dawa_. The
little Chieftainess is bitten in the finger by a hooded snake. The