Forging the Blades: A Tale of the Zulu Rebellion

Chapter Thirty One.
Envoi

The leafy summer day was at its close – and Horlestone Manor was in one of the leafiest parts of leafy England. Through its cool gardens in the cloudless sunset strolled two people.

“I wonder if you’ll ever long for the good old wild surroundings among all this tameness, darling,” one of them was saying.

“Tameness! Why, it’s Paradise!”

“Paradise! Wait until you see it in winter. You’ll yearn for the Lumisana when you’re shivering with three feet of snow piled up round the house.”

“No, I won’t. If I do I’ll go and stare at the big koodoo head and the indhlondhlo. Let’s have another look at them now.”

They strolled through the passage that led to Denham’s large and spacious museum. The great head looked down upon them from a prominent space, where it was throned all by itself. Beneath hung an inscription —

 
“Shot by Verna Denham,
Lumisana Forest, Zululand.”
 

Then the date.

“We shall have to turn that inscription face to the wall if James or Hallam or Downes come to give us their promised look-up,” laughed Denham.

“Oh, we’ll tell them to look the other way.” Then, growing serious: “Strange how so many of the things here should have been instrumental in bringing us our life’s happiness. It was through them we came together.”

“It was, thank God,” he rejoined, equally serious.

Finis.