Accordingly one evening I crossed the drift and headed for a kloof in which I was told the kraal stood. Ten minutes' ride brought me in sight of it. It was not a large kraal; there may have been six or eight huts and a cattle enclosure surrounded by the usual fence. The situation, however, was very pretty, a knoll of rising ground backed by the wooded slopes of the kloof. As I approached I saw women and children running to the kraal to hide, and when I reached the gateway for some time no one would come out to meet me. At length a small boy appeared who informed me that the kraal was "empty as a gourd."
"Quite so," I answered; "still, go and tell the headman that Macumazahn wishes to speak with him."
The boy departed, and presently I saw a face that seemed familiar to me peeping round the gateway. After a careful inspection its owner emerged.
He was a tall, thin man of indefinite age, perhaps between sixty and seventy, with a finely-cut face, a little grey beard, kind eyes and very well shaped hands and feet, the fingers, which twitched incessantly, being remarkably long.
"Greeting, Macumazahn," he said. "I see you do not remember me. Well, think of the battle of the Tugela, and of the last stand of the Amawombe, and of a certain talk at the kraal of our Father-who-is-dead" (that is, King Panda), "and of how he who sits in his place" (he meant Cetewayo) "told you that if he had his way he would find a hide rope to fit the neck of a certain one."
"Ah!" I said, "I know you now; you are Magepa the Buck. So the Runner has not yet been run down."
"No, Macumazahn, not yet; but there is still time. I think that many swift feet will be at work ere long."
"Well enough, Macumazahn, in all ways except one. I have three wives, but my children have been few and are dead, except one daughter, who is married and lives with me, for her husband, too, is dead. He was killed by a buffalo, and she has not yet married again. But enter and see."
So I went in and saw Magepa's wives, old women all of them. Also, at his bidding, his daughter, whose name was Gita, brought me some _maas_, or curdled milk, to drink. She was a well-formed woman, very like her father, but sad-faced, perhaps with a prescience of evil to come. Clinging to her finger was a beautiful boy of something under two years of age, who, when he saw Magepa, ran to him and threw his little arms about his legs. The old man lifted the child and kissed him tenderly, saying: