zouns, who were by way of having a bowing acquaintance with Arabic. Who was to interpret what, for the benefit of whom? I knew all the dialects well, they're very easy to learn; and the only other soul who knew any English at all was Akso himself, who knew about twenty words, though "damn" was the only one he often used.

However, it was a respite for another couple of months at least; and I had some faint hope that they might quash the sentence on the ground of irregularity, and order me to send Akso down to Port Collingwood for trial. If they did, he would probably succeed in bolting on the way. I sincerely hoped he would get off somehow, though I had sentenced him myself, and was prepared to see him hanged myself if the sentence was confirmed.

As it turned out, the delay was a good bit longer than two months. I really forget the details: I think somebody wrote "kindly" instead of "please" in an official letter; and somebody else wrote back that "please" was a request, but "kindly" was an order, and that he didn't take orders from the other man: you know the sort of rot. Anyhow, I got no news for month after month, and really was in a fair way to forget all about it.

And Manuyama, the Head Chief, died and was buried with his fathers, and Magoro his son reigned in his stead. There had been another son, Azindo, an ill-conditioned young whelp, always too much in with the witchdoctor to please me; but he had a certain following, and I had rather expected rows when old Manuyama died. But he seemed to have cleared out: at any rate I heard nothing of him.

Meanwhile the garden flourished exceedingly, and Akso was rapidly developing into a trusted and confidential servant. Our only real failure was

with the cabbages: do what he would, the white ants ate them; and this was the more annoying as I am particularly fond of cabbage. I was actually holding forth to Akso on the subject when the mail came in, with his death-sentence confirmed.

IV.

You may imagine what a shock it was to me to find that I had to take my excellent gardener out and hang him. I had been hoping that something would happen to prevent it; but there was the Governor's confirmation in black and white, and my duty was plain. It was no good delaying or beating about the bush, so I said

"Akso, the order has come from the Government that you are to be hanged. It will be to-morrow morning."

Akso said, "As your will is. But I couldn't help the white ants eating the cabbages."

I said, "What is this talk of cabbages? You are to be hanged for shooting the white man, Mr. Mackay."

man.

He said, "I did not shoot the white And besides, who is going to look after the garden if I am hanged? Quatso is no use. He is too old, and the others are more stupid than bulls." I said, "It is an order," and left him. I rather hoped he would bolt, but he didn't.

Next morning early the procession started from my house. Mohammed Hassan, the Maazoun, and Magoro, the new Head Chief, walked with me; behind us came poor Akso, between two policemen, and my old sergeant. All the men in the village had been turned out to see the execution. As we came to the place the sergeant stepped in front of me, halted facing me, and saluted.

"Well," I said, "what is it?"

"Of your kindness," said the sergeant, "Akso Wad Dok, your slave, could not prevent the white ants from

eating those cabbages. It is well known that they cannot be kept out of any garden. Also, he is a good gardener: I taught him."

There was a from the crowd.

murmur of approval Magoro said

"Perhaps your Excellency may think a flogging would be sufficient. Of course it is for your Excellency to decide."

I said, "No more of this talk. Akso Wad Dok has been convicted of the murder of the white man, Mr. Mackay. The Court has sentenced him to death, and his Excellency the Governor has confirmed the sentence." I read out the sentence and the confirmation in a loud voice, so that the whole crowd might hear.

Everyone looked at me in blank amazement. The sergeant grumbled, half to himself: "All the world knows that Azindo shot the white man with Akso Wad Dok's gun."

I turned to Mohammed Hassan for an explanation. "Indeed," he said, "this is the common report. It is said that Azindo listened to the tale of that mad fellow from the Congo, who boasted of shooting a white man. Then he went in the night and stole Akso Wad Dok's gun, and in the morning he shot the white man, being himself a fool, like that other. When he had shot him he threw down the gun, being afraid, and went to his father, Manuyama, the Head Chief, and told him all. Then Manuyama, fearing for the honor of his house, suborned witnesses against Akso Wad Dok, and sent Azindo to a far country."

I said, "Why have I not been told of this sooner? Did you know of it at the time of the trial?"

"At that time," he answered, "I did not know. Afterwards, your Excel

Blackwood's Magazine.

lency made Akso Wad Dok your gardener, and one of the chief of your servants. We thought that all was known to your Excellency, but that nothing was said out of regard for Manuyama, the Head Chief."

"Is this story true, Magoro?" I asked.

"I was away, buying corn," said Magoro. "But this is the story my father told me. As for Azindo, he was killed in Baghirmi a month since, through his own folly. A merchant has given me word of it."

Akso Wad

I was simply amazed. Dok grinned at me cheerfully. They all grinned. Everyone began talking at once, explaining and amplifying the story. They were quite respectful and polite; but they were instructing me, as an outsider, in a matter which seemed to be perfectly well known to everyone eise in the place. I once heard some cricketers in the Pavilion at Lord's explaining the elements of the game of cricket to a foreign Prince; this was just the same sort of thing. And I had been in charge of the district for years, and thought I knew if a mouse squeaked! It is easy to be wise after the event; but of course I ought to have spotted the point about the gun. Akso Wad Dok, if he had shot Mackay, would never have thrown down his gun and left it there. He would have bolted into the bush and taken it with him.

Well, we all went home again, quite happy, and held an inquiry, from which it appeared clearly that it was Azindo who had shot Mackay. I sent the new evidence down to Port Collingwood, with a recommendation for a free pardon for Akso Wad Dok, and in due course he was pardoned.

But, by Jove, what a wigging I got from the Attorney-General!

else

It seems a fact, however, and, like most modern signs, it is an unhealthy one. It is, indeed, a symptom of repletion. In our arms, our letters, our arts, manufactures, commerce, and crafts, success has been so long a foregone conclusion that we can bear neither to look at anything nor even to consider how any given success has been attained. In other words, we have no time or tolerance for anything but the finished article, and only for the very best of that. This inattention to processes has had a double effect. It has made this at once the most scenic and most gullible epoch of our once plain and cautious race. As with those senile connoisseurs whose mishaps (or executors) occasionally place a curio dealer in the dock of the Old Bailey, long acquaintance with masterpieces has dulled, instead of improved, the "eye" for discriminating between the genuine and the copy. No age was ever so kind to simulacra, to lay figures, as boneless and brainless as you please, so long as they be cunningly posed and clad. We cannot bear to be without our "specimens." If they be not in the market, we actually manufacture them for ourselves, acclaiming a Wellington in the nearest iron visage, a Pitt in the most sententious tongue, a Gainsborough in the swiftest extant brush, a Hero in practically anybody who does not flee from anything with danger in it. Like secret sellers of family portraits, we immediately fill with a copy each aching void as it occurs on the national walls. The substitute is as fine as the vanished chef d'œuvre in ex

ternals; and who has eyes for more? Thus we live amidst an incessant parade of things, not as they are, but as we would have them, and as they would like to be thought to be. As the greater includes the less, never before has the theatre so nearly touched the zenith of its art, namely, the reflection of human nature; since never before have audiences connived with mummers in caring so little for the souls of plays and so greatly for their clothing. In consequence, never before has the theatre been a place of entertainment so paltry, so uninteresting, except as a pathological specimen, and so full.

For its mission is perfect.

The greater stage is not less crowded with processions and pageants, with padded images of grandeur, with mediocrities passing as mighty by reason of their raiment or their raving, with armies numerous not in men but in reappearances; it is not less vocal with sound and fury signifying nothing, not less spangled with "stars" deriving their radiance from magnesium; nor less splendid with the garniture of sovereignty, statesmanship and patriotism covering men who are merely engaged in seeking their living as anxiously as the hungriest super in the back row. But flanking both stages are the Wings.

Were jesting Pilate with us to-day. with two thousand years of unclean ideals superadded to his doubts, how he would reiterate his famous query, put, we like to think, not in jest at all, but in the sadness which to me has always enveloped this buried treasure of a man. But if, as story has it, his questioning soul still flits about the world, it could soon be laid to rest. It is certain both what Truth is and where she is to be found. Cease

questing about the stage, thou unquiet Roman, and seek her in the Wings, the rough, raw, reverse sides of things, where, amidst cordage, smells, sawdust, and squalor, perfection is prepared with heavy toil by common men and women, all as real as the rocks and trees, though separated from the fairylands behind which they lurk and work by no more than the thickness of a can

vas.

There is something intensely interesting, nay, there is nothing else so interesting as the constructive part of our highly finished life of to-day. How hidden it is! The coral-builders are not more secretive than the hosts who labor for our safety, our pleasures, or our whims. I lately chanced to be present when a collection of superb old paintings was being rehung; and as they lay about the floor on every side, "like camels stooping to unlade their riches"-so many thousands of guineas in each few inches of pigment-it occurred to me to look at the backs of

them. I am sorry I did so. The pictures were soon on their walls again, the "glimmering vista" glowed once more with "Rubens' gaudy banners and the rich jewels of Titian"; but through the divine impasto of Nymph, Madonna, and Hero I still saw the skeleton of wooden struts and stretchers, of linings of canvas and the parqueting and riveting of panels, and finally the scars and filth which centuries had bestowed upon the unvalued face of each well-nigh priceless obverse. Here was a part of the Wings of art, the stage carpenter's part, infinitely skilful and laborious, as shocking as the slums which cluster around a fashionable

London square. I saw another part when, a little later, I visited an artist friend, than whom not Whistler himself breathed more tenderly on to canvas the subtle harmonies which tremble in this city air-I refer to the late most lamented Paul Maitland. I found

him whelmed in an atrocious atmosphere, hot as a navvy, dirty to his finger-tips. He was busy stretching and "priming" his canvases for the coming summer's work, and he looked and felt no more like the creator of his own most delicate landscapes than the workman who stamped out Wordsworth's steel nibs resembled the poet.

Look now at that little pile of written sheets, blotted, crowded with erasures, alterations, interpolations. There is scarcely a word and not an adjective that has not been rewritten, some twice or thrice over. Is it Smith minor's Latin exercise after correction by his indignant usher? No, it is the original manuscript, the Wings, in fact, of one of the easiest flowing passages in all British literature, a model of style, lucidity, and polish, ground out, as many such masterpieces have been, by one who, sitting impransus by the midnight candle, wrestled with the entire English tongue and got it under, one Samuel Johnson.

Come next into that swell tailor's shop, or "place of business," as he himself would have it; and indeed "shop" appears too crude a word for so sumptuous a divan. Here all is suavity and well-bred calm, tempered light, pile carpets, polished men and mahogany. It seems scarcely decent to mention trousers in such a place, nor is the presiding genius in a hurry to broach the subject. The winner of the St. Leger, Lord A's luck with the stags on his new forest, the divorce case, your own fishing, or his own motor-carthese are his gently divulged interests, and he will take from you a cigarette or a cheque on account with equal debonairiness. He has no business on hand, apparently, nor any desire for any. Your mere appearance within his doors charms him and his, your conversation delights him, your order is less welcome than your jest. But ask him to let you descend the spidery,