The woman was right: I was but a fool, for all my wisdom and my white hairs.

Had I not been a fool I would have smoked out that rat in the thatch before ever I opened my lips.

For the rat was Zinita, my father--Zinita, who had climbed the hut, and now lay there in the dark, her ear upon the smoke-hole, listening to every word that passed.

It was a wicked thing to do, and, moreover, the worst of omens, but there is little honour among women when they learn that which others wish to hide away from them, nor, indeed, do they then weight omens.
So having searched and found nothing, I spoke to Umslopogaas, my fosterling, not knowing that death in a woman's shape lay on the hut above us.

"Hearken," I said, "you are no son of mine, Umslopogaas, though you have called me father from a babe.