who had not lost all the instincts of her womanhood, and who
fed and nursed the white stranger as tenderly as though he were her
own son.

While the old negress lived, Herbert Cheyne had been left in peace to
languish back to life, through days and nights of intolerable
suffering, until he had regained a portion of his old strength; then a
fever carried off his protectress, and he became virtually a slave.

Out of pity for the tender-hearted girl who listened to him, Mr.
Cheyne hurried over this part of his sorrowful past. He spoke briefly
of indignities, abuse, and at last of positive ill treatment. Again
and again his life had been in danger from brute violence; again and
again he had striven to escape, and had been recaptured with blows.

Phillis pointed mutely to his scarred wrists, and the tears flowed
down her cheeks.

"Yes, yes; these are the marks of my slavery," he replied, bitterly.
"They were a set of hideous brutes; and the fetish they worshipped was
cruelty. I carry about me other marks that must go with me to my
grave; but there is no need to dwell on these horrors. He sent His
angel to deliver me," he continued, reverently; "and again my
benefactor was a woman."

And then he went on to tell Phillis that one of the wives of the chief
in whose service he was took pity on him, and aided him to escape on
the very night before some great festival, when it had been determined
to kill him. This time he had succeeded; and, after a series of
hair-breadth adventures, he had fallen in with some Dutch traders who
had come far into the interior in search of ivory tusks. He was so
burnt by the sun and disfigured by paint that he had great difficulty
in proving his identity as an Englishman. But at last they had
suffered him to join them, and after some more months of wandering he
had worked his way to the coast.

There misfortune bad again overtaken him, in the form of a long and
tedious illness. Fatigue, disaster, anguish of mind, and a slight
sunstroke had taken dire effect upon him; but this time he had fallen
into the hands of good Samaritans. The widowed sister of the consul, a
very Dorcas of good works, had received the miserable stranger into
her house; and she and her son, like Elijah's widow of Zarephath, had
shared with him their scanty all.

"They were very poor, but they pinched themselves for the sake of the
stricken wretch that was thrown on their mercy. It was a woman again
who succored me the