"If your people are thirsty, Noie," exclaimed the King, "I have beer for them to drink, for at least the locusts have left me that. Bid them throw away the water, and I will give them beer."
"It is not water, King," she answered, "but dew gathered from certain trees before sunrise, and it is their spirits that are thirsty for knowledge, not their bodies, for in this dew they read the truth."
"Then the Inkosazana must be of their family, Noie, for she read of the coming of the white chief Dario in water, or so they say."
"Perhaps, O King, if it is so these prophets will know it and acknowledge her."
Now for a long while there was silence, so long a while indeed that Dingaan and his Councillors began to move uneasily, for they felt as though the dwarf men were fingering their heart-strings. At length the three dwarfs lifted their wrinkled faces that were bleached to the colour of half-ripe corn, and gazed at each other with their round, owl-like eyes; then as though with one accord they said to each other: "What seest thou, Priest?" and at same sign from them Noie translated the words into Zulu.
Now the first of them, he who had cursed the soldier, spoke in his low hissing voice, a voice like to the whisper of leaves in the wind, Noie rendering his words.
"I see two maidens standing by a house that moves when cattle draw it. One of them is dark-skinned, it is she," and he pointed to Noie, "the other is fair-skinned, it is she," and he pointed to Rachel. "They cast, each of them, a hair from her head into the air. The black hair falls to the ground, but a spirit catches the hair of gold and bears it northward. It is the spirit of Seyapi whom the Zulus slew. Northwards he bears it, and lays it in the hand of the Mother of the Trees, and with it a message."
"Yes, with it a message," repeated the other two nodding their heads.
Then one of them drew a little package wrapped in leaves from his robe, and motioned to Noie that she should give it to Rachel. Noie obeyed, and the man said: "Let us see if she has vision. Tell us, thou White One, what lies within the leaves."
Rachel, who had been sitting like a person in a dream, took the packet, and, without looking at it, answered: "Many other leaves, and within the last of them a hair from this head of mine. I see it, but three knots have been tied therein. They are three great troubles."