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130 "It's the same thing in every place, whether Zululand or Broadway—you can't do business without capital. Anyway, I was only about twenty-one, and you can't see very far beyond your nose at that age. Besides, there are lots of things I'd have missed if I had stayed in Africa—being here, for instance," he said smiling.

"Then really we owe your Kaffir a debt of gratitude," she replied with a twinkle in her eyes.

"I do, though I never knew it before," observed Keith. "The last I saw of him he was running across the veldt as though the devil himself was after him. It's queer on what little things our whole lives hinge sometimes. Ridiculous though it sounds, I don't suppose I should be here now but for the fact that one of that nigger's goats fell sick. He went to an umtakati—that's a Zulu witch-doctor—and asked him to cure the animal. The witch-doctor had his knife into us because we had put some of the natives wise to the fact that he was an old fraud, so he told the nigger the only way to remove the curse from the goat was to burn our store down. The funny part was that the umtakati, tickled to death about it, sent us a message telling how he'd worked the thing. And I'm blessed if the Kaffir's goat wasn't as fit as a fiddle immediately afterwards."

He spoke of his ups and downs lightly enough,