And yet a gift is a gift and must be used. You, /Baba/,
have a gift of shooting and do you cease to shoot? You have a gift of
wandering and can you cease to wander?"
He picked up one of the burnt feathers from the little pile by his
side and looked at it attentively. "Perhaps, /Baba/, you have been
told--my ears are very sharp, and I thought I heard some such words
floating through the air just now--that we poor Kaffir /Inyangas/ can
prophesy nothing true unless we are paid, and perhaps that is a fact
so far as something of the moment is concerned. And yet the Snake in
the /Inyanga/, jumping over the little rock which hides the present
from it, may see the path that winds far and far away through the
valleys, across the streams, up the mountains, till it is lost in the
'heaven above.' Thus on this feather, burnt in my magic fire, I seem
to see something of your future, O my father Macumazana. Far and far
your road runs," and he drew his finger along the feather. "Here is a
journey," and he flicked away a carbonised flake, "here is another,
and another, and another," and he flicked off flake after flake.
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