And I felt that the hypothetical Hans was right, death alone could cut this knot, and the reflection made me shiver.
That night I slept uneasily and dreamed.

I dreamed that once more I was in the Black Kloof in Zululand, seated in front of the huts at the end of the kloof.

Before me squatted the old wizard, Zikali, wrapped up in his kaross--Zikali, the "Thing-that-should-never-have-been-born," whom I had not seen for years.

Near him were the ashes of a fire, by the help of which I knew he had been practising divination.

He looked up and laughed one of his terrible laughs.
"So you are here again, Macumazahn," he said, "grown older, but still the same; here at the appointed hour.