There were some letters scratched on its polished blade; they gathered round to look. On the one side was inscribed the year "18--;" Mrs Daveney held the lamp nearer; on the other, deeply and freshly indented, were two words-- The date was barely a month old. Oh! that shriek! those appalled faces! Mr Daveney took his insensible daughter Eleanor in his arms, and carried her away; her mother covered her face with her hands. They had no doubt _now_ who was the agitator in Kafirland. Before sunset a scout came in, breathlessly announcing that slender wreaths of smoke were beginning to curl up on the points of the hills, and that a Kafir herald, with a feather at his ankle, had been seen by the herds stealing up a pathway from the kloof. Some of these herds had probably followed him, for there were deserters among the farm-servants. "Then," said Mrs Daveney, "this is the surest sign of an attack, if we wanted no other evidence of mischief. And now, God help us!" She withdrew with Marion. At midnight the watch-fires sparkled on the mountains, and along the more distant ridges the war-cry sounded faintly; but before morning dawned it rang out, loud, prolonged, and clear, and the settlers at Annerley knew that Kafirland was "up." CHAPTER SIXTEEN. THE SUNLESS KLOOF. Meanwhile, guided by Doda, Lee, or, as we may now call him, Lyle, threaded his way through some of those innumerable defiles which, cleaving the great mountains of the Amakosa country in twain, afford covert for many a marauding party with its cattle; and, having passed the Zonga River, the two wanderers sat down to rest in a "murky glen," impervious to the sun. At the time when the people at Umlala's Kraal were intent on torturing the unhappy Amayeka, Lyle and Doda were quietly preparing to refresh themselves with such provision as they had brought with them, and both were not a little startled at hearing the branches in the jungle giving way before some footsteps. There was a crash close to them; two horns emerged from the speck boom, or elephant bush, the head of a huge ox became visible, the body followed, and then two dusky figures. These were our old friend Zoonah and a thieving comrade. The animal had been abstracted from a kloof, where a herd of stolen cattle had been concealed, and the worthy pair had sought this solitary spot with intent to slaughter the beast, and keep holiday as long as it lasted. The apparition of a white man, seated beside Doda, elicited from them the usual exclamation of "Ma-wo!" but the party very soon understood each other, and the three Kafirs having _reimed_ the poor creature, they proceeded to destroy it after their own fashion, which I should be sorry to describe. Suffice it to say, that the wretched animal, being secured beyond all power of resistance, was deprived of its tongue by the most cruel process, and its skin subjected to the assegai ere it was fairly dead.