She was supposed to be telling them Bible stories to prepare them for their Sunday School examination, which, indeed, she did with embellishments and in their own poetic and metaphorical fashion. The 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 Floweret withers! Imba dies!” Almost instantly there was a disturbance in the kraal and Menzi appeared, following by a man carrying a bag. He cried back in the same strange voice: “I hear. I come. Tie string or grass round the lady Imba’s finger below the bite. Tie it hard till she screams with pain.” Meanwhile the Christian nurse had rushed off over the crest of the koppie to fetch Thomas and Dorcas, or either of them. As it chanced she met them both walking to join Tabitha in her bower, and thus it came about that they reached the place at the same moment as did old Menzi bounding up the rocks like a _klipspringer_ buck, or a mountain sheep. Hearing him, Thomas turned in the narrow gateway of the kraal and asked wildly: “What has happened, Witch-doctor?” “This has happened, White-man,” answered Menzi, “the Floweret has been bitten by a hooded snake and is about to die. Look at her,” and he pointed to Tabitha, who notwithstanding the venom sucking and the grass tied round her blackened finger, sat huddled-up, shivering and half comatose. “Let me pass, White-man, that I may save her if I can,” he went on.