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"I do not know," Noma answered weeping; "the vision of them passes from me; but all the distances of death were open to my sight; yes, I travelled through the distances of death. In them I met him who was the king, and he lay cold within me, speaking to my heart; and as he passed from me he looked upon the child which I shall bear and cursed it, and surely accursed it shall be.
The kings who slept there were accompanied to their resting-places by numbers of their wives and servants, who had been slain in solemn sacrifice that they might attend their Lord whithersoever he should wander. "What is that you desire and would do?" asked Noma, in a hushed voice. Bold as she was, the place and the occasion awed her. "I desire wisdom from the dead!" he answered.
"Did I not tell you it was accursed?" she wailed. "Take it away!" and she sank back in a swoon. So he took the child, and buried it deep in the cattle-yard by night. After this it came about that Noma, who, though her mind owned the sway of his, had never loved him over much, hated her husband Hokosa. Yet he had this power over her that she could not leave him.
"The spirits of the dead have no shape or form; they are invisible, and can speak only in dreams or through the lips of one in whose pulses life still lingers, though soul and body be already parted. Have no fear. Ere his ghost leaves you it shall recall your own, which till the corpse is cold stays ever close at hand. I did not think to find a coward in you, Noma."
Moving to and fro she searched the spoor with her eyes, then rose with a sigh of joy. It was old, and marked the passage of the great company of women and children and their thousands of cattle which, in execution of the plot, had travelled this path some days before. Either the impi had not yet arrived, or it had gone by some other road. Weary as she was, Noma followed the old spoor backwards.
Bring her milk to drink." "There are some wives who would not find that so great an evil," replied Noma mockingly, as she rose to do his bidding. Hokosa winced at the sarcasm, and turning to his visitor, said: "Now tell me your tale; but say first, why are you so frightened?"
On the crest of the hill facing the gorge, as Noma had suggested, he left six regiments with instructions to fly before Nodwengo's generals, and when they had led them far enough, to follow him as swiftly as they were able.
"What do you here, Noma, and wherefore have you come?" "I come because you draw me," she answered, "and because they seek my life below." "Repent, repent!" he whispered, "there is yet time and Heaven is very merciful." She heard, and a fury seized her. "Be silent, dog!" she cried. "Having defied your God so long, shall I grovel to Him at the last?
The ceremony took place, not in the church, for Owen was too weak to go there, but in the largest room of his house and before some few witnesses chosen from the congregation. Even as he was being signed with the sign of the cross, a strange and familiar attraction caused the convert to look up, and behold, before him, watching all with mocking eyes, stood Noma his wife.
She repeated it word for word, making no fault. "Have no fear," she added, "I shall forget nothing when I stand before the prince." "You are a woman, but your counsel is good. What think you of the plan, Noma?" "It is deep and well laid," she answered, "and surely it would succeed were it not for one thing.
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