“Ay, gone, and there stood Bougwan staring at the wall like one asleep, and presently he went too, and I waited a while and came away also.”
“Art thou sure, Umslopogaas,” said I, “that thou hast not been a dreamer this night?”
In reply he opened his left hand, and produced about three inches of a blade of a dagger of the finest steel. “If I be, Macumazahn, behold what the dream left with me. The knife broke upon Bougwan’s bosom and as I passed I picked this up in the sleeping-place of the White Queen.”
Telling Umslopogaas to wait, I tumbled into my clothes and went off with him to Sir Henry’s room, where the Zulu repeated his story word for word. It was a sight to watch Curtis’ face as he heard it.
“Great Heavens!” he said: “here have I been sleeping away while Nyleptha was nearly murdered—and all through me, too. What a fiend that Sorais must be! It would have served her well if Umslopogaas had cut her down in the act.”
“Ay,” said the Zulu. “Fear not; I should have slain her ere she struck. I was but waiting the moment.”
I said nothing, but I could not help thinking that many a thousand doomed lives would have been saved if he had meted out to Sorais the fate she meant for her sister. And, as the issue proved, I was right.
After he had told his tale Umslopogaas went off unconcernedly to get his morning meal, and Sir Henry and I fell to talking.
At first he was very bitter against Good, who, he said, was no longer to be trusted, having designedly allowed Sorais to escape by some secret stair when it was his duty to have handed her over to justice. Indeed, he spoke in the most unmeasured terms on the matter. I let him run on awhile, reflecting to myself how easy we find it to be hard on the weaknesses of others, and how tender we are to our own.
“Really, my dear fellow,” I said at length, “one would never think, to hear you talk, that you were the man who had an interview with this same lady yesterday, and found it rather difficult to resist her fascinations, notwithstanding your ties to one of the loveliest and most loving women in the world. Now suppose it was Nyleptha who had tried to murder Sorais, and _you_ had caught her, and she had pleaded with you, would you have been so very eager to hand her over to an open shame, and to death by fire? Just look at the matter through Good’s eyeglass for a minute before you denounce an old friend as a scoundrel.”