was a tiny child, with nothing at all on, æt. four or so. He showed a mouthful of teeth, and, viewed en profile, bulged a good deal in front. Asked his name, he made the usual answer of childhoodstuck most of a grubby little fist into his mouth. His merry eyes did not hold any fear, and presently he took his hand out of his mouth and gripped my littlest finger in a sticky clasp. That settled it.

We watched the sports, wandering from point to point of vantage, and, when all was done, we stood very stern and straight whilst everybody gave cheers for the King. Nobody came to claim my friend, so we walked off the ground together, I making for the Club, and my mate still holding tight on to me. His hand was of a stickiness! Men at the Club were much at their ease with long chairs, long cold drinks, and tobacco, and demanded to be introduced to my guest. One's guest has to have a name, and I presented him as "Mr Johnson." Thus, having caught a friend, I did, within a couple of hours, put a label on him. A tornado came up, wind and black darkness, and thunder and flashing lightnings, and great gouts of rain. Johnson and I, he tucked under my arm, made at top speed for my quarters.

He and my dog dined with me; one stationed on each side of my chair. My Irish terrier was small, with a wonderful heart. He swam rivers in flood, cantered behind my pony when his Master rode, bit bad natives,

of twice his weight and inches that could look him in the eye. For these reasons the wee chap was called Zaki, which means, in Hausa, Lion. By the way, I suppose everybody knows what a "pie" dog is? The name covers all those scallywag beasts-yellow, mangy, snappy, sore-eyed ours that live-save the mark-in native towns. They seem to illustrate in their vile bodies all the vices and deficiencies of all known breeds of dog. Truly an unholy and unwholesome mixture.

No

Mr Johnson stood guard at my left hand, and Zaki was on my right. They were both good trenchermen, and hearty catholic feeders, to whom nothing came amiss. Johnson, that first night, did himself well on biscuits, curry, roast fowl, custard pudding, and a handful of sweets. Then he arranged himself on the floor and went to sleep. He reported himself early next morning, when I was toying with a cup of tea and a biscuit. body came to ask if I had found a small black child wandering, and it was only when I made special inquiry that I learned my friend was a freed slave—a kiddie found in the possession of slave - dealers, bought by them from other slave-dealers— unable to speak any language, and impossible to repatriate, because nobody knew where he came from. When the Court dealt with his owners, it turned Mr Johnson over to the care of a black clerk, a Nigerian Babu, and Johnson thought not much of what some people at home

would call his social and economic conditions, because he deserted from the clerk's household and attached himself to mine, doubtless because the feeding there was more toothsome and less exiguous.

The child grew into my establishment in just no time at all. The servants treated him with that gentle tolerance that most natives show to children. He and Zaki the terrier were on fair terms: my steward use to say that "Jomsin," which was as near as the retainers could get to "Johnson," ate as much as five white men ; and of course this made a difference to Zaki, who had been first gleaner at my table till the arrival of Jomsin. Zaki was the better mannered of the two; Johnson, his two hands full of food, more food smeared about the front of his body, his arms, and the region of his mouth, would let tears well into his eyes and chase down his chubby greasy cheeks at the sight of Zaki being helped to part of a dish before himself. Jomsin's zeal and dash at eating led to the enacting of a rule that he should attend meals dressed in nothing, or, at any rate, in as little as possible; and he used to be swabbed down with plenty of water on the back verandah directly after each meal.

When there was no food about, Musa, the steward, loved to dress the child up in heaps of clothes. And the youngster loved it. He had a tiny scarlet fez, with lots of white muslin wrapped turban

wise about it; he had a white drill frock-coat and long trousers; and he was tied about his middle with a scarlet kummarband; and he had a tiny sword in a red leather scabbard slung across his shoulders; and his fat little face shone and his eyes gleamed; and the wee rascal used to strut and preen and prink himself on the verandah, and loved every moment of it. But he got out of all his finery at the double on the approach of food.

I never taught him any English, but he began very soon to pick up a little Hausa. Physically he thrived (or is it throve?), and he had as much nous as a white child of twice his years; but he spoke very little. He kept his eyes open, and his fingers ready to grab, and his little legs to run; mere speech he was slow at. He used to watch for me when I was due back from the Courthouse, and would come charging down the steps and catch my little finger tightly in his hand, always a sticky hand, and march me into the house. Whenever a caller came along, Mr Johnson was the first to sight him and came to report. Then, when the visitor, whether afoot or riding, had reached the gate, the wee chap would dash out to meet him and bring him in. More than once he got dangerously under the heels of a bothersome pony.

I got orders to move a hundred and fifty miles, and take over another district. We journeyed by road, and Jomsin did the distance perched atop of a tiny hill pony something

about eight hands high. The lad was getting to be something of a luxury: a special pony had to be found and bought for him, and a man had to be hired to feed and lead the beast with Mr Johnson on board. Mr Johnson sat like Mr Tod Sloan used to sit, very far forward, and a good deal hunched up. About the third day out he got hold of a stick, and there was very nearly a disaster when, nobody observing him at the time, he started laying in to his mount with the thorny end. The sun bothered him; so he was fixed up with an enormous thing called a "malfa," which is a straw hat with a wide brim, very thick and heavy, richly decorated with coloured leather, cowrie shells, and other odds and ends. Viewed from the rear, Jomsin, in the hat, on the pony, was a queer sight indeed. To any carrier or other person who jostled his pony or gave him dust, Mr Johnson spoke loudly and freely, very freely.

He took a great interest in the soldiers, and made a practice of attending most mornings at the Parade Ground to watch the men drilling. Myself unseen, I watched him one blazing hot afternoon out in the compound, near the kitchen, marching about with a stick, earried rifle-wise. He shouted commands to himself, and turned and halted and started off again with tremendous élan. Then he passed from ceremonial to the sterner part of a soldier's training. Carrying his stick at the trail, he began to stalk the cook, a fat queru

lous person from Lagos. Presently he dropped flat in the sand, wriggled into cover behind a kerosene tin, sighted and aimed, remarked "boom," and startled the cook, sunning himself in the kitchen doorway. Jomsin lay, watching the result of his shot, and presently rose up, explained matters to the the cook, and ordered him to lie down, drop down in fact, every time he shot at him. Ojo (the cook, at. prob. circa 40) grumbled rather, but agreed: and I watched a long performance, Mr Johnson Johnson stalking the kitchen door from all sorts of angles, dropping down and shrieking "boom," whereupon the cook went down also, and expired with suitable groans and wriggles. It was a great game, and if I had been the cook, I would have seen Jomsin Bassa in before I would

have played it.

And so we went on, until one day a wire came to say we were at war with Germany, and started a month of stress. Troops came streaming into Nafada from three points of the compass, horse soldiers and foot soldiers, signallers and doctors, machine guns and carriers, black soldiers, white officers, and small parties of Europeans, miners, traders, officials, volunteers for the Cameroons Expeditionary Force. From Kano and Bauchi and Katagum and Naraguta and Pankshin they came, hundreds of miles, through swamps and across rivers and over mountains, all hurrying to the front. The two notable things in

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Nafada at the time were a famine and an unfordable river, half a mile wide, full of brown, rushing, ugly-looking, angry water. All arrivals had to be fed, and had to be got across the river, and things hummed in Nafada for some weeks. Mr Johnson made his bow to and welcomed more white men than he had thought the world held. Jomsin was no snob: he trotted out and grabbed a Colonel's little finger just as readily as that of a Political Officer; some day he will grow up, and be a man of sense, and will know, and do, differently.

People were getting in at all sorts of times, day-time and night-time, and they all arrived hungry and thirsty; life for Mr Johnson was one long meal, from dawn till after dark, and he grew disgracefully fat and wheezed like a pug, and got so that he would turn up his nose at a bit of toast or chicken outlet: cake and asparagus and sardines and salmon and tinned fruit yes; toast nothing doing. I think it must have been during those weeks that Mr Johnson colleoted great part of his vocabulary. There came a day when I overheard the little chap dealing very faithfully with some labourers who had displeased him. He stood on the verandah, in safety, and told those men things about themselves, and about their relations, and about their own past and future, in good round English and Hausa mixed, that surprised me. I can only think that whilst acting host in my

place he had picked things up from the brutal and licentious soldiery. Flanders(poor Flanders)—got the credit of teaching our men to swear, and the soldiers' backs are broad enough to shoulder the business of having taught Jomsin a thing or two suitable and useful to be said to black labourers who loaf and are not clean.

As the troops came, so they departed, at all sorts of queer hours. The weather was vile, and the country just a swamp with the rain pouring down, but Mr Johnson never failed to speed the parting braves, even as he had welcomed them when they came in. Poor wee man-I remember such a damp chilly little person that stood with me one very early A.M. in the mud and rain to see the Mounted Infantry go off. Several of his friends that went off that morning had so few more marches to do on earth.

Last-I got orders to go and join up at Yola, and was told to hurry. So I packed myself in a small canoe that had been a duck-shooting punt in happier days, and got ready to venture forth on the two hundred and fifty miles' run, down the Gongola river and up the Binue river, to Yola. Mr Johnson I proposed to deposit with a reputable citizen of Nafada, paying a reasonable sum for his keep.

On my way down to the canoe I saw Mr Johnson sitting on his host's shoulder, and I bade him farewell and got in, Then there was