“Ho, ho, ho!” he laughed—that wonderful laugh of his which echoed from the rocks and always made me feel cold down the back, “Ho, ho, ho! how easy it is to make you angry. Keep your temper, Macumazahn, lest it should run away with you as your oxen did before the storm in the mountains the other day. What do you want? You only come here when you want something from him whom once you named the Old Cheat. So I don’t wander, don’t I, but sit like a toad in a stone? How do you know that? Is it only the body that wanders? Cannot the spirit wander also, far, oh, far, even to the ‘Heaven Above’ sometimes, and perhaps to that land which is under the earth, the place where they say the dead are to be found again? Well, what do you want? Stay, and I will tell you, who explain yourself so badly, who, although you think that you speak Zulu like a native, have never really learned it properly because to do that you must think in it and not in your own stupid tongue, that has no words for many things. Man, my medicines.” A figure darted out of the hut, set down a cat-skin bag before him, and was gone again. Zikali plunged his claw-like hand into the bag and drew out a number of knuckle bones, polished, but yellow with age, which he threw carelessly on to the ground in front of him, then glanced at them. “Ha,” he said, “something about cattle, I see, yes, you want to get oxen, broken oxen, not wild ones, and think that I can tell you where to do it cheap. By the way, what present have you brought for me? Is it a pound of your white man’s snuff?” (As a matter of fact, it was a quarter of a pound.) “Now am I right about the oxen?” “Yes,” I replied, rather amazed. “That astonishes you. It is wonderful, isn’t it, that the poor Old Cheat should know what you want. Well, I’ll tell you how it is done. You lost two oxen by lightning, did you not? You therefore, naturally would want others, especially as some of those which remain”—here he glanced at the bones once more—“were hurt, yes, by hailstones, very large hailstones, and others are showing signs of sickness, red-water, I think. Therefore, it isn’t strange that the poor Old Cheat should guess that you needed oxen, is it? Only a silly Zulu would put such a thing down to magic. About the snuff, too, which I see you have taken from your pocket—a very little parcel, by the way. You’ve brought me snuff before, haven’t you. Therefore, it isn’t strange that I should guess that you would do so again, is it? No magic there.” “None, Zikali, but how did you learn of the lightning killing the cattle and of the hailstorm?”