The wizard left his covert, and, gliding along the bank above, peeped over it occasionally to watch them. Sometimes they stopped on their way and whispered. He could hear Amayeka's voice falter, and he cursed her knowledge of the white man's language. Once, just where the moon's rays glinted, they stood, and Amani could see in Amayeka's hands something glittering. He recognised it as a steel chain, which he had observed round Gray's neck, with a knife of many blades suspended by it. How often he had coveted it! He heard the knife drop; Gray was unconscious of its fall. The Kafir girl picked it up, and gave it to her lover. Little thought Amayeka of the great need in which that knife would help her within a few hours. At the lower drift Amayeka crossed the stream. Gray watched her over; took a keen glance up and down, little dreaming that Amani was watching him from a wolf-hole ten yards off; and then a low chirrup, like the cry of the quail, announced that all was safe in the copse Amayeka had entered. Gray then traversed the stones of the ford. Ere long, Amani could see them emerge singly from the covert, Amayeka taking one path, for it was not too dark for Kafir eyes to distinguish the outline of a woman's form, with the little meercat trotting after her; her lover went another way, and then the wizard, profiting by a cloud which overshadowed the moon's silver rim for a minute or two, stepped stealthily across; and, biding his time, sought his hut, and retiring therein, closed the matted entrance, and began to chant his demoniacal incantations, to the great awe of the people assembled round their fires at the doors of their dwellings. Gray found Lee supping on broiled meat, and one of poor Amayeka's coarse, sweet cakes; and Lee, after rallying the deserter on his passion, informed him that he proposed next day to start for the foot of the mountains with Doda, who had got leave from Umlala to guide the "White Brother" to the trading station. Gray was passive in the strong man's hand. If he ever attempted remonstrance with his master--for such he felt the elder convict to be-- the latter invariably denounced him as too weak to be vicious, swearing he would be a knave if he dared. As to escape from such thraldom, he could see none; and on the other side of the picture was Amayeka, the only creature on earth whom he loved, or who loved him. Honourable servitude was beyond his reach at present, and in the mean time he was pledged to Amayeka--vaguely--but still pledged. To her he owed all the comforts of his present sad existence, and she had many ways and means of ministering to them; he was bound to her by the ties of gratitude as well as of affection; he pitied her, and he believed, moreover, that if he left her, she must die--die perhaps by torture!