"It was you and no other."
"And what did you promise me then, Prince Maduna?"
"Maiden of high birth, I promised you your life and your goods, should
you ever fall into my power."
"Does a leader of the Amandabele, one of the royal blood, lie like a
Mashona or a Makalanga slave? Does he do worse--tell half the truth
only, like a cheat who buys and keeps back half the price?" she asked
contemptuously. "Maduna, you promised me not one life, but two, two
lives and the goods that belong to both. Ask of your brother there, who
was witness of the words."
"Great Heavens!" muttered Robert Seymour to himself, as he looked at
Benita standing with outstretched hand and flashing eyes. "Who would
have thought that a starved woman could play such a part with death on
the hazard?"
"It is as this daughter of white chiefs says," answered the man to whom
she had appealed. "When she freed us from the fangs of those dogs, you
promised her two lives, my brother, one for yours and one for mine."
"Hear him," went on Benita. "He promised me two lives, and how did this
prince of the royal blood keep his promise? When I and the old man, my
father, rode hence in peace, he loosed his spears upon us; he hunted us.
Yet it was the hunters who fell into the trap, not the hunted.
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