"Let him stay here with me, and set your guard without my gates." "How do I know that he will not murder you, friend ?" asked the king.
"This man is a snake whom few can nurse with safety." "He will not murder me," said Owen smiling, "because his heart is turned from evil to good; also, there is little need to murder a dying man." "Nay, speak not so," said the king hastily; "and as for this man, be it as you will.

Come, I must take counsel with my captains, for our danger is near and great." So it came about that Hokosa stayed in the house of Owen.
On the morrow the Great Place was full of the bustle of preparation, and by dawn of the following day an _impi_ of some seventeen thousand spears had started to ambush Hafela and his force in a certain wooded defile through which he must pass on his way to the mountain pass where his women and children were gathered.

The army was not large, at least in the eyes of the People of Fire who, before the death of Umsuka and the break up of the nation, counted their warriors by tens of thousands.
But after those events the most of the regiments had deserted to Hafela, leaving to Nodwengo not more than two-and-twenty thousand spears upon which he could rely.

Of these he kept less than a third to defend the Great Place against possible attacks, and all the rest he sent to fall upon Hafela far away, hoping there to make an end of him once and for all.

This counsel the king took against the better judgment of many of his captains, and as the issue proved, it was mistaken.
When Owen told Hokosa of it, that old general shrugged his shoulders.
"The king would have done better to keep his regiments at home," he said, "and fight it out with Hafela here, where he is well prepared.
Yonder the country is very wide, and broken, and it may well chance that the _impi_ will miss that of Hafela, and then how can the king defend this place with a handful, should the prince burst upon him at the head of forty thousand men?
But who am I that I should give counsel for which none seek ?" "As God wills, so shall it befall," answered Owen wearily; "but oh! the thought of all this bloodshed breaks my heart.