Moreover, he was sure, and I shared his confidence, that in these changed circumstances both that young woman and her father would look upon his suit with very favourable eyes.

He had, so to speak, succeeded to the title and the family estates by means of a lawsuit brought in the "Court of the Assegai," and therefore there was hardly a father in Zululand who would shut his kraal gate upon him.

We forgot, both of us, the proverb that points out how numerous are the slips between the cup and the lip, which, by the way, is one that has its Zulu equivalents.

One of them, if I remember right at the moment, is: "However loud the hen cackles, the housewife does not always get the egg." As it chanced, although Saduko's hen was cackling very loudly just at this time, he was not destined to find the coveted egg.

But of that matter I will speak in its place.
I, too, looked at those cattle, wondering whether Saduko would remember our bargain, under which some six hundred head of them belonged to me.
Six hundred head! Why, putting them at L5 apiece all round--and as oxen were very scarce just at that time, they were worth quite as much, if not more--that meant L3,000, a larger sum of money than I had ever owned at one time in all my life.