sounds well, Jobo. Now is the time to tell it--or some of it--to
the people outside. They wait to hear."

The Rev Job Magwegwe--by the way the name by which the chief had
addressed him was a corruption of his "Christiana" name--was an educated
Fingo, hailing from the Cape Colony, where he had been trained for a
missionary, and finally became a qualified minister in one of the more
important sects whose activity lay in that direction. But he promptly
saw that in the capacity of missionary he was going to prove a failure.
Those of his own colour openly scoffed at him. What could he teach
them, they asked? He was one of themselves, his father was So-and-So--
and no better than any of them. The whites could teach them things, but
a black man could not teach a black man anything. And so on.

But luck befriended the Rev. Job. The Ethiopian movement had just come
into being, and here he saw his chance. There was more to be made by
going about among distant races where his origin was not known, living
on the fat of the land, and preaching a visionary deliverance from
imaginary evils to those well attuned to listen, than staying at home,
striving to drill into a contemptuous audience the "tenets" of a
dry-as-dust and very defective form of Christianity. So he promptly
migrated to Natal, and being a plausible, smooth-tongued rogue soon
found himself in clover, in the official capacity of an accredited
emissary of the "Ethiopian Church," whose mission it was to instil in
the native mind the high-sounding doctrine of "Africa for its natives."

CHAPTER SIX.

A NATIVE UTOPIA.

The open space outside the kraal was thronged. Hundreds had collected
in obedience to the word of the chief. More were still coming in, and
the preacher rubbed his fat hands together with smug complacency. Your
educated native is nothing if not conceited, and the Rev Job Magwegwe
was no exception to this rule. Here was an audience for him; a noble
audience, and, withal an appreciative one.

His appearance was greeted by a deep murmur from the expectant crowd,
which at once disposed itself to listen. He had resumed his black coat
and waistcoat and settled his white choker; he was not going to omit any
accessory to his clerical dignity if he knew it.

He led off with a long prayer, to which most of those present listened
with ill-concealed boredom, but the smug self-conceit of the man had
captured his better judgment, and he was only