he protested, laughing. "That's compounded of many simples," the sort of thing that makes a quoted Maurice. poet's friends quite useless to him unless he hears their real opinions at second hand. I assure you I've got an extremely durable hide." "I had no idea of backing out," said Penelope firmly. "And what is wrong with my poor Ardfillan'?" "It's all pretence. It's one of the things that make me sure a great deal of poetry's just an infant's game. 'Ardfillan's' only words and makebelieve. You pretend to be very melancholy about its crumbling walls and empty windows_____"} "A melancholy of mine own, "And say you wept as you walked in its ruined cloister." "So I did," he protested. "Those ruins affect me very poignantly." "When?" "Last summer," he replied, betraying his uneasiness. Penelope looked at him with widely open eyes. "Ardfillan Priory!" she exclaimed indignantly. "You've only read about it in a book or seen it in a picture. There isn't a stone of it standing on another, and there hasn't been for eighty years: they were taken away and built into dykes and byres.' (To be continued.) FROM THE OUTPOSTS. AMADUDU. His name You have only to call it aloud, making the most of each syllable, as his mother did when he played truant, to see what a pleasant name it was. His father was Amadu the dyer, who prodded sodden clothes in the indigo-pits with a long pole all day, and returned home in the evening for his supper. are not was Amadudu. consecutive days was a very Amadudu was one of half a hundred picoaninnies who formed the rising generation of the village of Lere. All the villages in Africa between the Congo and the Sahara are very much alike, and Lere was just the usual straggling collection of round mud huts, with conical roofs of grass, surrounding the open market-place under the great smooth-limbed cotton - trees. Above the grass fences that shut in the different compounds rose here and there the straight bare stems of the date-palms and pawpaw-trees, each with its clustered top of leaves, and, in season, of fruit. On one side rose the bush-clad hills, where the monkeys chattered in the glens ; and & great plain stretched away on the other, a patchwork of scrub and tilled fields. The event that brought Amadudu into prominence and made his name the theme of chatter and gossip for three an and the jingling of the harness and the noise of a long brass trumpet which never ceased blaring its two sole notes, that animal was quite restless and fidgety enough even for the requirements of a royal procession. Thus they wended their way along the narrow alleys and past the mosques and through the market, and every one scuttled away into their compounds and then peeped at them over the fences, and some tapped their mouths with dutiful awe, while the women made shrill ululatory cries of welcome. All this the King saw with fullhearted pleasure, though his dignity forbade him to give it outward expression. Not & muscle of his face moved, and his gaze forward never flinched. A mountain of linen swathed his head and encircled his chin. In his robe of blue with white embroidery, and his long leather boots, he certainly looked very imposingand perhaps a little topheavy. Now, on the previous day his mother had given Amadudu a dry black poppy seed-pod, so that he could amuse himself while she knelt and ground the corn and sang endless songs in a querulous treble beneath the shade of the house of Amadu the dyer. Amadudu had never possessed a real toy before, nothing but the sticks and pebbles which he could pick up round the compound or in the market close by. So his delight was great when he found the poppy - pod, which was as big as a tennis-ball and half-full of little hard seeds, made a delightful rattle. He would sit for hours on the dusty path that skirted his father's house-for he wore no clothes to spoil-and clutching it with both hands shake it up and down to a crooning vocal accompaniment of his own that no one could understand but himself. Then he found that it rattled even louder when thrown, so he would dash it on the ground and watch it bounce this way and that until he could throw himself on the top of it and hold it prisoner. In all Lere there was no happier baby than Amadudu, the son of Amadu the dyer. I must tell you that the way to the King's house from the gate that looked out on the corn-fields led by Amadu's compound round a sharp narrow corner, so narrow that if two women with water-pots on their heads chanced to meet there, one would have to stoop almost to her knees, while the other scrambled up along the bank at the side, before either could pass. Even so the old women, whose limbs were thin and shaky, and who made Amadudu gurgle, for he seldom laughed outright,-always spilt a little water in their agitation, until a wet slippery patch had formed in the path in which more than once he had turned up the little white soles of his feet a-sprawl in the mire. So it came about that the King and his retinue approached the corner where Amadudu sat playing with his poppy-pod, and so wrapped was he in his game that he and hands. Reverently they raised him to his feet, bewildered and half-stunned by his fall, and led him amid a chorus of regretful salutations to the palace. paid no heed to the sound of the centre to the bottom. His the drumming and singing sword was bent double, and drawing nearer and nearer. the red-tasselled cord by which Then occurred the calamity it hung from his shoulder torn that made Amadudu too fam- in half. Mud covered his face ous in Lere. For just as the Court, in single file, rounded the turning, Amadudu flung the pod with all his might in the air, and where should it alight but on the nose of the King's horse, which was in front of all! The animal reared in surprise, almost recovered, slipped on the wet patch, plunged again as the iron rowels dug into its sides, and finally threw his master bodily over the fence into the compound of Amadu the dyer. For a moment there was pandemonium. All the other horses began curveting and jostling one another in the narrow lane. The chamberlain's horse backed heavily against the chief mallam's, and though a mallam may never swear, yet if looks can express an oath then was the holy man on this occasion unmistakably profane. The drummers and chanters of praises were suddenly silent, and some shouted unmeaningly, while others ran round to the entrance of the compound to attend to their outraged lord. Luckily for the King of Lere, his fall had been a soft one. He lay in a patch of sweet potato, bruised and shaken, but with unbroken bones. But what a sorry and indecorous plight for a Kingfor a young bull-elephant! His turban had fallen off, and his gown was flung over his head. His spurred boot had caught in the folds and rent it from As for Amadudu, the moment the bedizened head of the royal horse appeared tossing round the corner, he had fled, vanished. Under the farthest corner of his father's bed he crept and curled, though, happily for his peace of mind, unaware of the particular and unique disaster he had occasioned. Not till nightfall, after his father had called his name loudly and often, and his mother had wrung her hands, and had even begun breaking the domestic utensils, with the ory that he was dead, did he emerge from his place of refuge, and only then to be cuffed by both parents and told to go supperless to bed. Amadudu oried softly till past midnight, while his mother called him "Mischievous one" and "Goodfor-nothing " and other even more outrageous names. But at last she perceived that for some time she had been wasting her breath, for Amadudu had buried his head in the fold of her dress and was fast asleep. All the audible talk next day was of the affairs of life, but the whispers and asides spoke of nothing but the King and the sweet-potato patch. "Amadu will be expelled, by God!" said Ali the leather worker, as he gave the finishing snips to a purse of red and yellow goatskin with a cunning slip-knot fastening. Ali was a Kano man by birth. When a child, his father had handed him over to a teacher to learn Arabic and the truths of the Faith. For three years Ali had sat in a ring of baby scholars lisping after the old greybeard the verses of the holy Book, or trying to keep the wooden writing-tablet balanced on his knee while he covered it with sprawling alifs and kafs. A rap on the skull had been the reward of a moment's inattention, until the long hours and stern discipline at last turned his soul to revolt. An opportunity came when a band of merchants, with fifty donkeys loaded with salt, encamped at the outskirts of the town. Ali trotted off before sunrise and hid among the donkeys that were hobbled in a pack near the southern gate. Between the false and the true dawn the caravan had started, and Ali was not discovered till some miles were between him and the walls of Kano, within which he vowed never to return. Since then he had tried many trades, and tired of them all. Carrying a load of sixty to eighty pounds all day is not a life of ease. Rubber-collecting is less laborious, but takes you into dangerous parts, where the pagans live, who know not God and eat men. Sedentary work for Ali, and leather-working is clean work and sociable. In Lere, where he had finally settled (and not without reason, as long as Zara of the black and white eyes lived there too), he was chiefly noted for the grave precision with which he foretold the future and delivered opinions on men and affairs. Also the mallam's knuckles had not rapped on his head in vain. He could still write in the dust with a quick finger when he wished to impress the illiterate, who, luckily for him, must needs be uncritical of the characters. When Ali, therefore, with emphatic movement of head and hands, foretold the banishment of Amadu the dyer, the word passed swiftly out from his booth and spread through the market, from the butchers selling fly-blown morsels of meat, to the cloth merchants, to the circles of women squatting over calabashes of rice and dry fish, to the dyers at their wells, thence to the knot of Fulani herd-folk driving hard bargains for their butter and sour milk, and so back again with endless repetition and not a few pious ejaculations that such a thing might not befall. "God save you!" said Ibrahim the barber in a voice of mournful deprecation, "the King is proud as kings must be, but he will not step aside to tread on an ant. God give him patience! God prolong the life of the King!" The last words were uttered in a louder tone, for a royal messenger, with the skirt of his gown gathered in hand, was picking his way through the throng. Perchance he may have heard, thought the barber, as, delicately adjusting his |