Again Dingaan moaned, for he had heard these very words spoken. Umbopa turned and stared at him, and he stared at Umbopa. “Come hither,” said Rachel, beckoning to the old man. He obeyed, and she threw the corner of her cloak over his head, and whispered into his ear. He listened to her whisperings, then with a cry broke from her and fled away out of the council of the King. When he had gone there was silence, though Dingaan looked a question with his eyes. “Ask it not,” she said, “ask it not of me, or of him. I think this Mopo here had his secrets in the past. I think that once he sat in a hut at night and bargained with certain Great Ones, a prince who lives, and a prince who died. Come hither, come hither, thou son of Senzangacona, come from the fields of Death and tell me what was that bargain which thou madest with Mopo, thou and another?” and once again Rachel beckoned, this time upwards in the air. Now the face of Dingaan went grey, even in the moonlight it went grey beneath the blackness of his skin, for there rose before his mind a vision of a hut and of Mopo and of Umhlangana, the prince his brother whom he had slain, and of himself, seated in the darkness, their heads together beneath a blanket whispering of the murder of a king. “Thou knowest all,” he gasped, “thou art Nomkubulwana and no other. Spare us, Spirit who canst summon our dead sins from the grave of time, and make them walk alive before us.” “Nay, nay,” she answered, mockingly, “surely I am but a woman, daughter of a Teacher who lives yonder over the Tugela, a white maiden who eats and sleeps and drinks as other maidens do. Take notice, King, and you his captains, that I am no spirit, nothing but a woman who chances to bear a high name, and to have some wisdom. Only,” she added with meaning, “if any harm should come to me, if I should die, then I think that I should become a spirit, a terrible spirit, and that ill would it go with that people against whom my blood was laid.” “Oh!” said the King, who still shook with fear, “we know, we know. Mock us not, I pray. Thou art the Spirit who hast chosen to wear the robe of woman, as flame hides itself in flint, and woe be to the hand that strikes the fire from this stone. White One, give us now that wisdom whereof thou speakest. Shall I fall upon the Boers or shall I let them be?” Rachel looked upwards, studying the stars. “She takes counsel with the Heavens, she who is their daughter,” muttered one of the indunas in a low voice. As he spoke it chanced that a bright meteor travelling from the south-west swept across the sky to burst and vanish over the kraal of Umgugundhlovo. “It is a messenger to her,” said one. “I saw the fire shine upon her hair and vanish in her breast.” “Nay,” answered another, “it is the _Ehlose_, the guardian ghost of the Amazulu that appears and dies.” “Not so,” broke in a third, “that light shows the Amaboona travelling from the south-west to be eaten up in the blackness of our impis.”