His mother had been the ruler of a small semi-independent state on the sea-coast at the head of the Gulf of Boni.  He spoke of her with pride.  She had been a woman resolute in affairs of state and of her own heart.  After the death of her first husband, undismayed by the turbulent opposition of the chiefs, she married a rich trader, a Korinchi man of no family.  Karain was her son by that second marriage, but his unfortunate descent had apparently nothing to do with his exile.  He said nothing as to its cause, though once he let slip with a sigh, “Ha! my land will not feel any more the weight of my body.”  But he related willingly the story of his wanderings, and told us all about the conquest of the bay.  Alluding to the people beyond the hills, he would murmur gently, with a careless wave of the hand, “They came over the hills once to fight us, but those who got away never came again.”  He thought for a while, smiling to himself.  “Very few got away,” he added, with proud serenity.  He cherished the recollections of his successes; he had an exulting eagerness for endeavour; when he talked, his aspect was warlike, chivalrous, and uplifting.  No wonder his people admired him.  We saw him once walking in daylight amongst the houses of the settlement.  At the doors of huts groups of women turned to look after him, warbling softly, and with gleaming eyes; armed men stood out of the way, submissive and erect; others approached from the side, bending their backs to address him humbly; an old woman stretched out a draped lean arm—­“Blessings on thy head!” she cried from a dark doorway; a fiery-eyed man showed above the low fence of a plantain-patch a streaming face, a bare breast scarred in two places, and bellowed out pantingly after him, “God give victory to our master!” Karain walked fast, and with firm long strides; he answered greetings right and left by quick piercing glances.  Children ran forward between the houses, peeped fearfully round corners; young boys kept up with him, gliding between bushes:  their eyes gleamed through the dark leaves.  The old sword-bearer, shouldering the silver scabbard, shuffled hastily at his heels with bowed head, and his eyes on the ground.  And in the midst of a great stir they passed swift and absorbed, like two men hurrying through a great solitude.

In his council hall he was surrounded by the gravity of armed chiefs, while two long rows of old headmen dressed in cotton stuffs squatted on their heels, with idle arms hanging over their knees.  Under the thatch roof supported by smooth columns, of which each one had cost the life of a straight-stemmed young palm, the scent of flowering hedges drifted in warm waves.  The sun was sinking.  In the open courtyard suppliants walked through the gate, raising, when yet far off, their joined hands above bowed heads, and bending low in the bright stream of sunlight.  Young girls, with flowers in their laps, sat under the wide-spreading boughs of a big tree.  The