Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 5, 1894.djvu/73

picks and commenced a hot pursuit. They had not much difficulty in catching the fugitive, but she wept, begged them to kill her, and behaved so extraordinarily that the women allowed her to escape. She now determined to avoid the kraals, and travel as much as possible in the bush. A terrible fright caused by a leopard was the only incident she met with, and at the end of the fourth day she forded the river Tugela, very tired and very hungry. Uzinto now went to a kraal to obtain food, and to discover where her people lived. The owner saw that she was a fugitive, and thought it a fine opportunity to gain a wife without expense. She declined to become an inmate of his house, and abode with one of his wives for the night. The jealous wife communicated to her the information she wanted, and told her that the man wished to deceive her. When Uzinto departed in the morning the master of the kraal met her, and again endeavoured to persuade her to return. He was rich; she should have plenty of milk and plenty of beef; she had only to become his wife to be happy and honoured. She listened in silence, and went on her way to her own people, where she was received by the chief as one of his wards. Then began her search for her lover. His brother's kraal adjoined her new home, and one morning, meeting her lover's favourite nephew, affecting not to know him, she said that his face was not altogether strange to her, and wondered where she had seen him. The boy did not think he had seen her anywhere, and when she suggested the Folosi river, he told her he had never been there. The truth was, the shrewd urchin knew her, and wanted to make her more explicit, and say whose nephew he was. She found that her lover was many miles away. The boy took a message from her, and her lover's reply was favourable, though no present accompanied it; and when Uzinto thought thereon her heart was sad. Meantime two suitors paid her unremitting attention, but she turned a deaf ear to their prayers. After a while her lover came back, but the offended maiden would not deign