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Updated: June 24, 2025
Look! the door was opening; it swung wide, and through it advanced eight Kaffirs, carrying something on a litter made of shields, something that was covered with a blanket of bark. They drew near to her with bent heads, and set down their burden at her feet. Then one of them lifted the blanket, revealing the body of Richard Darrien, and saying in an awed voice,
"I will go," said the young man who had brought in the spy, and as he spoke he turned, and lo! his face was the face of Richard Darrien, bearded and grown to manhood, but without doubt Richard Darrien and none other. "Why do you offer to undertake so dangerous a mission?" asked the Boer, looking at the young man kindly.
But she might not live. She had sworn that she would rather die than become his wife, and she was not a woman who broke her word. Also she hated him bitterly, and with good cause. There was only one way to work on her through her love for this man, Richard Darrien; for that she did love him, he had little doubt.
"Richard Darrien!" they cried, "Richard Darrien!" But no Shape swept in bearing the spirit of Richard in its arms. "He is not here," said the voice in her heart. "Go, seek him in some other world." She grew angry. "Thou mockest me," she answered, "He is dead, and this is the home of the dead; therefore he must be here. Shadow, thou mockest me." "I mock not," came the swift answer.
In his path sat the King and his Councillors, and around them a regiment of men. He walked through them unheeding, till at length, when he was in front of the King, they barred his road, and he halted. "Who art thou and what is thy business?" asked an old Councillor with a withered hand. "I am Richard Darrien," he answered, "and here I have no business. I journey to the north. Stay me not."
It was very pleasant here, and the raindrops shaken from the wet leaves fell upon her fevered face and hands and refreshed her. She tried to forget her troubles for a little while, and began to think of Richard Darrien, her boy-lover of a long-past hour, wondering what he looked like now that he was grown to be a man. "If only you would come to help me! Oh!
"Bring food for the Inkosi Darrien," she said, "and send hither the captain of the gate." Presently the man arrived crouched up in token of respect, and shouting her titles.
It was a long dream whereof afterwards she could remember but little, but in it there were shoutings, and black faces, and the flashing of spears; also the white man Ishmael was present there. One part, however, she did remember; Richard Darrien, grown taller, changed and yet the same, leaning over her, warning her of danger to come, warning her against this man Ishmael.
Was this but a fiction of an overwrought and disordered mind, or had she seen a vision of things passing, or that had passed, far away? If it were a dream, then this was but another drop in her cup of bitterness. If a true vision oh! then what did it mean to her? It meant that Richard Darrien lived, Richard, of whom her heart had been full for years.
Say that the Inkosi Darrien has brought her tidings which make it needful that she should travel hence speedily if the Zulus, her people, are to be saved from great misfortune, and say, too, that he goes with her. If the King or his indunas would see the Inkosazana, or the chief Darrien, let him or the indunas meet them on their road, since they have no time to visit the Great Place.
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