others, Uncle George; I’ve been keeping you from them quite long enough.” And with her arm still on the old man’s shoulder she leads him to the door, and they join the family circle in the cheerful lamplight.

Volume One—Chapter Three.

The Slave Settlement.

“Idiot! Don’t you see that the poor devil can’t move an inch further to save his wretched life. Leave him alone. You’re the greatest brute even in this bestial land?”

“Am I? And if I am, what’s that to you?” is the defiant reply.

The first speaker is a young Englishman, whose face, tanned to a coppery brown by exposure to a torrid sun, bears a stamp of recklessness and determination. His bearded lips are set firm as he confronts the other, a powerful, savage-looking mulatto, and his eyes are ablaze with wrathful contempt. Around stretches a wide, sun-baked desert in Central Africa. A few palms, dotted about here and there, throw a faint pretence of a shadow, and not far from the cloudless horizon hangs the now declining sun. A gang of black men and women, weary and emaciated, and a few of them tied together, are standing wearily contemplating one of their number who lies prone upon the earth, sick, footsore, and unable to move another step. It is a slave-gang on the march.

“Here, you two,” goes on the first speaker, addressing a couple of the strongest-looking among the slaves, “pick him up and carry him along.”

The two fellows designated pause, and look hesitatingly from one to the other of their drivers. They stand in mortal fear of the ruffianly mulatto, and prefer to chance the wrath of the Englishman.

“Do you hear what I say? Let him alone, Sharkey,” repeats the latter in a warning tone.

For all answer the ruffian addressed advances upon the fallen slave, and with a frightful grin, disclosing two pointed, shark-like teeth—whence his hideous sobriquet—curls his raw-hide lash round the naked body of the emaciated wretch. But a terrific blow full in the face sends him reeling half-a-dozen paces.

“There! Won’t you listen?” And the Englishman stands between the miserable wretch and his smiter. With a growl like a wild beast, the latter springs up.

“Stand off, Sharkey!” cries his companion in a firm, warning tone. Too late. With features working in fury, and foaming at the mouth, the other rushes upon him 

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