“The people hear and say: ‘It is a man-wolf who has done all this. We catch him now!’ So they put nice back-fat and tongue in the cache, and hide close by. After dark the wolves come. When the man-wolf see that good food he run to it and eat. Then the people run in and catch him with ropes and take him to a lodge. Inside in the light of the fire they see who it is. They say: ‘This is the man who was lost!’
“Man say: ‘No. I not lost. My wives try to kill me.’ And he tell them how it was. He say: ‘The wolves take pity on me or I die there.’
“When the people hear this they angry at those bad women, and they tell the man to do something about it.
“Man say: ‘You say well. I give them to the Bull-Band, the Punishers of Wrong.’
“After that night those two women were never seen again.”
Mary Moosa, when one of her stories went well, with the true instinct of a story-teller could seldom be persuaded to follow it with another, fearing an anti-climax perhaps. She turned in under her little tent, and soon thereafter trumpeted to the world that she slept.
Stonor and Clare were left together with self-conscious, downcast eyes. All day they had longed for this moment, and now that it had come they were full of dread. Their moods had changed; chaffing was for sunny mornings on the river; in the exquisite, brooding dusk they hungered for each other. Yet both still told themselves that the secret was safe from the other. Finally Clare with elaborate yawns bade Stonor good-night and disappeared under her tent.
An instinct that he could not have analysed told him she would be out again. Half-way down the bank in a little grassy hollow he made a nest for her with his blankets. When she did appear over the top of the bank she surveyed these preparations with a touch of haughty surprise. She had a cup in her hand.
“Were you going to spend the night here?” she asked.
“No,” he said, much confused.