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"I thought over the matter myself, and I found that the only three men about here whose skulls would do, were Kwababana Xolilizwe's uncle Xolilizwe, and myself. I at once made up my mind that Kwababana would be the man, because he was very old, and besides his rank was highest, his father having been the brother of Madikane.
But seeing how matters stood, I told Xolilizwe that he had better keep away. Shortly after this he disappeared from the neighbourhood. "In the days I speak of, Lukwazi was the most important man in these parts. Although inferior to me in rank, he was very rich, and Makaula, Ncapayi's successor, had made him Chief over the people in this neighbourhood; consequently I was under him.
She walked in amongst the people and straight up to me without saying a word. I shall never forget her face it was like the face of one that had been dead for several days all except the eyes, which were full of fire. I knew at once that Xolilizwe was dead.
There I found my daughter's body, with the stone which I had seen lying near Xolilizwe's headless trunk tied to the neck by the string of twisted bark. It was a pity. She would have been the mother of men. "I dug a hole where she had left the pick stuck in the ground, for I now understood she had meant the placing of the pick thus as a sign that she wished me to bury her next to Xolilizwe.
It was strange that my wife showed no trace whatever of white descent, whilst Nomalie most certainly did, both in colour and feature. I soon found out the reason of this; she had grown fond of a young man named Xolilizwe, a son of the right-hand house of one of Ncapayi's counselors who, like me, had lost all his wealth.
He came here and asked me to give him Nomalie as his wife, offering the cattle he had stolen as an installment of the dowry, the balance of which he would pay later on, when able to do so. I consented, as I wanted to make up to the girl for any previous hardness, so she went as the wife of Xolilizwe to the kraal of his uncle, old Kwababana.
Upon two points I kept wondering: one was in connection with the skull whose was it, and where had the witch-doctor obtained it? The other was the absence of Xolilizwe where was he, and what excuse would he give for not being present when the great son of the Chief took the Shwama? "We drank beer, and danced, and made merry all the forenoon.
I saw a man near me who must have passed Kwababana's kraal in coming to the feast, and I asked him if he had seen anything of Xolilizwe. He told me he had heard that Xolilizwe was away following the spoor of old Kwababana's only milking cow, which had been stolen three days previously, and had not returned. "Just after the sun had begun to fall, I saw my daughter Nomalie approaching.
He could tell me nothing about Nomalie, and when I told him that Xolilizwe was dead, he thought I meant the cow, and began to cry out. When I at last was able to make him understand that it was Xolilizwe I had said was dead, and not the cow, he appeared to be quite comforted, I then went back to my own kraal, but Nomalie was not there, nor had she been seen or heard of.
"She took my hand and silently drew me after her, and thus we walked down the footpath to the drift on the other side of the Ghoda, which you meant to have passed to-night. We crossed the stream, and she led me to the edge of the bush and pointed to something lying just inside the outer fringe of brushwood. I looked, and saw the headless body of Xolilizwe. "I recognised the body at once.
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