She looked so friendless, so helpless, yet so far above the other girls, who, forgetting their terror in excitement, were chattering and whirling about near her, that Gray could hardly resist his impulse to descend the hill, cross the glen, and hurry to the scene of action; but he had had sufficient experience of Kafir habits to feel that he could do no good by rushing into the midst of the excited assembly. Indistinct sounds reached him, and he could see the people were every moment becoming more earnest as they watched the wizard, who continued to rock himself to and fro, gibbering and screeching. At length Amani suddenly sprang up, and rolled his fierce orbs round the circle. Miserable victims of a power, which owns no law, a superstition based on cruelty and vice! How many quailed before the assegai as it was again waved aloft! Unhappy wretch! who risked thy life to bring the poor settlers' cattle to thy selfish chieftain's kraal, dost thou think thou art discovered--doomed--because thou hast secreted in a wooded glen part of the plunder for thyself wherewith to buy thy wife? Thou boy warrior, of the strong arm and supple limbs, in form like a young Apollo, does the fearful wizard know, too, that thou hast fixed thy will upon the child of one of his foes, for he has many? Thou girl of a laughing eye and merry voice, does thy blood turn cold as thou rememberest the day when, resting from thy tillage in the meelie garden, thou didst mock the wizard, forgetting those were near thee who would seek his favour by betraying thee? Aged woman, with palsied head and shrivelled features, almost blind, too, but not deaf, art thou dreading his vengeance, because thou call'st to mind that he, by whose rude couch thou hast been watching all the night, and striving to aid in pain and sickness with thy poor herbal medicines, is one whom Amani hates? Thou mother, with a baby on thy shoulder, why are thy lips compressed, thy brow with anguish stamped? Dost thou quail at thought of thy tall son, who is betrothed to Umlala's daughter, the child of that Gaika wife, whose feet the great chief gashed and crippled, searing the gory wounds with red-hot assegais, because Amani, the wizard, denounced her as untrue? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Such scenes as these had at times been partially detailed to Gray, but he had had no evidence of their reality. The crowd, in their eager fear, spread out like a fan, as though each member meditated an escape; but a loud summons from the principal councillor drew them round their chief, and all doubts were soon dispelled as to the real victim of the day.