"If you build a school in the valley it will be burned," said the king, sententiously. "Then let me take just six of your young men to the mission-station at Mupolo, and let them live with me only a few months. I say this for your own good, John. While the world moves on, you are left behind in darkness. Let me teach the light to a few of your young men that you may learn of them.” "Never!" said the chief, rising. "And if you ever show yourself here again, you will become food for jackals and vultures. You will fall suddenly from one of these cliffs, and no English magistrate will know how you fell." Makebesani swayed a little on his bare feet, and his little black eyes were watery and inflamed. Plainly he was drunk, and the missionary knew there was no use to parley further. As he started down the mountain, he passed a woman sitting in the sun and nursing a swollen jaw, with closed eyes, drawn face, and tense fingers of both hands pressed hard against the cheek. "What's the trouble?" he asked sympathetically. A man grinding a mixture of herbs on a flat stone near by sprang to his feet and poured forth a voluble tale of the sufferings of his wife. A tooth hurt her so that she had not slept for two nights. He had tried to pry it out on the point of a spear, but the tooth had broken and hurt her worse than before. Now he was preparing medicine that he hoped would relieve the pain. "If you can do anything for her," he concluded, "I will give you three cows. She is my first wife, and it is not fortunate for me to have my first wife suffer this way." "Come with me to the station with her and I think I can stop that pain," said Deming, reassuringly. That same evening he extracted the broken stump of the tooth, thus opening an abscess that had formed at its base. The relief that came was immediate, and the happy couple fairly groveled at his feet from excess of joy. Deming, however, would not accept payment, but sought their help in establishing a school at Inyati. They promised gladly. About this time wild rumors were current concerning the advent of the dread Rinderpest, a cattle-plague that was sweeping the whole continent of Africa. It broke out in Transvaal. A month later it was ravaging the northern part of Natal. Then it spread east, west, and south until not a cattle-owner in the country escaped some loss. Makebesani had left scarcely one hundred emaciated beasts from his splendid herds. While the missionary was sorry for the chief's plight, he was at the same time satisfied that it was all for the best. He could see a larger good to come. He paid another visit to the ruined chief, having no fear, because meanwhile he had made friends with many of the younger generation on the mountain by such acts of kindness as had won the hearts of the woman with the toothache and her devoted husband. John Makebesani was sitting before his hut in the sunshine with his head between his knees. At sound of the horse's tread, he looked up and rushed at the missionary. "You son of destruction, what are you doing here!" he roared, shaking his heavy walking-stick in the white man's face. Mr. Deming tried to pacify him. "Surely you will listen, now that you have lost so much. Let me tell you of treasures that fail not, of possessions that perish not." "You shall rot in a crocodile's belly first," bellowed the mad chief, and hurled the stick at the missionary. It struck his horse, from which he had just dismounted, and it broke away and ran down the mountain. "Seize the snake!" commanded Makebesani, pointing at Deming. There were a dozen or more about the white man, and others were fast approaching. Some started forward with menacing gestures, but the missionary was not unprepared. In the crowd he recognized those whom he had won to himself, among them the grateful husband, and he called them forth by name. "If you want a school in the valley, you will stand on my side. I trust myself to you." The chief was in a frenzy now, and himself sprang at the missionary, but was blocked by a wall of his own kin. Seeing his advantage, Mr. Deming calmly urged the haggard inmates of the kraal to forsake the mountain-top and come down into the valley with him. The two whom he had won that first day were the first to join him openly. Others followed, until the chief was left with only a handful of his most faithful wives and oldest sons. In bitter despair Makebesani rushed into the great, broad waste of the cattlekraal, where once five hundred beasts had been kept, and flung himself upon his face on the hard, yellow earth. slowly after, and urged as a matter of policy that he go with the children down the mountain-side. "I will die first," he swore, and lay speechless. But before night he arose and sought peace in the valley. In the eyes of the missionary, at least, Pharaoh's heart had been softened by the The remnant of his tribe followed great scourge of Rinderpest. THE POT OF GOLD BY VIRGINIA WATSON WHERE art thou bound, my friend, that the day grows old? I seek the rainbow's end, Where lies the pot of gold. Dread mountains must thou scale And shouldst thou find the gold, Wilt buy more land and gear, How, then, wilt better fare, If thou the gold shalt find? THE WOMEN OF THE FIFTH PAPER: THE SISTERS OF CALIGULA AND BY GUGLIELMO FERRERO Author of "The Greatness and Decline of Rome," etc. AFTER, the problem of the succession FTER the death of Tiberius (37 one. presented to the senate was not an easy In his will Tiberius had adopted, and thereby designated to the senate as his successors, Caius Caligula, the son of Germanicus, and Tiberius, the son of his own son Drusus. The latter was only seventeen, and too young for such a responsibility. Caligula was twenty-seven, and therefore still very young, although by straining a point he might be emperor; yet he did not enjoy a good reputation. If we except him, there was no other member of the family old enough to govern except Tiberius Claudius Nero, the brother of Germanicus and the only surviving son of Drusus and Antonia. He was generally considered a fool, was the laughing-stock of freedmen and women, and such a gawk and clown that it had been impossible to put him into the magistracy. Indeed, he was not even a senator when Tiberius died. As they could not consider him, there remained only Caligula, unless they wished to go outside the family of Augustus, which, if not impossible, was at least difficult and dangerous. For the provinces, the German barbarians, and especially the LXXXII-79 soldiers of the legions, were accustomed to look upon this family as the mainstay of the empire. The legions had become especially attached to the memory and to the race of Drusus and Germanicus, who still lived in the minds of the soldiers as witnesses to their former exploits and virtues. During the long watches of the night, as their names were repeated in speech and story, their shades, idealized by death, returned again to revisit the camps on the banks of the Rhine and the Danube. The veneration and affection which the armies had once felt for the Roman nobility were now centered about the family of Augus In this difficulty, therefore, the senate chose the lesser evil, and, annulling a part of the testament of Tiberius, elected Caligula, the son of Germanicus, as their emperor. The death of Tiberius was destined to show the Romans for the first time that although it was hard to find an emperor, it might be even harder to find an empress. During the long reign of Augustus, Livia had discharged the duties of this difficult position with incomparable success. Tiberius had succeeded Augustus, and after his divorce from Julia had never remarried. There had therefore been a long interreg 651 |