ing my master has set for
your guidance."

Word for word it was a paraphrase of an address which Sanders himself
had delivered three months ago. His audience may have forgotten the
fact, but Notiki at least recognized the plagiarism and said "Oh, ho!"
under his breath and made a scornful noise.

"Now I must go from you," said Bosambo.

There was a little chorus of dismay, but Notiki's voice did not swell
the volume.

"The King has called me to the coast, and for the space of two moons I
shall be as dead to you, though my fetish will watch you and my spirit
will walk these streets every night with big ears to listen to evil
talk, and great big eyes to see the hearts of men. Yea, from this city
to the very end of my dominions over to Kalala." His accusing eyes fixed
Notiki, and the thin man wriggled uncomfortably.

"This man is a devil," he muttered under his breath, "he hears and sees
all things."

"And if you ask me why I go," Bosambo went on, "I tell you this:
swearing you all to secrecy that this word shall not go beyond your
huts" (there were some two thousand people present to share the
mystery), "my lord Sandi has great need of me. For who of us is so wise
that he can look into the heart and understand the sorrow-call which
goes from brother to brother and from blood to blood. I say no more save
my lord desires me, and since I am the King of the Ochori, a nation
great amongst all nations, must I go down to the coast like a dog or
like the headman of a fisher-village?"

He paused dramatically, and there was a faint--a very faint--murmur
which he might interpret as an expression of his people's wish that he
should travel in a state bordering upon magnificence.

Faint indeed was that murmur, because there was a hint of taxation in
the business, a promise of levies to be extracted from an unwilling
peasantry; a suggestion of lazy men leaving the comfortable shade of
their huts to hurry perspiring in the forest that gum and rubber and
similar offerings should be laid at the complacent feet of their
overlord.

Bosambo heard the murmur and marked its horrid lack of heartiness and
was in no sense put out of countenance.

"As you say," said he approvingly, "it is proper that I should journey
to my lord and to the strange people beyond the coast--to the land where
even slaves wear trousers--carrying with me most wonderful presents that
the name of the Ochori shall be as thunder upon the waters and even
great ki