e. I stood at his back. "Marvellous," he whispered, and
seemed to forget my presence. His history was curious. He had been born
in Bavaria, and when a youth of twenty-two had taken an active part in
the revolutionary movement of 1848. Heavily compromised, he managed
to make his escape, and at first found a refuge with a poor republican
watchmaker in Trieste. From there he made his way to Tripoli with a
stock of cheap watches to hawk about,--not a very great opening truly,
but it turned out lucky enough, because it was there he came upon a
Dutch traveller--a rather famous man, I believe, but I don't remember
his name. It was that naturalist who, engaging him as a sort of
assistant, took him to the East. They travelled in the Archipelago
together and separately, collecting insects and birds, for four years or
more. Then the naturalist went home, and Stein, having no home to go to,
remained with an old trader he had come across in his journeys in the
interior of Celebes--if Celebes may be said to have an interior. This
old Scotsman, the only white man allowed to reside in the country at the
time, was a privileged friend of the chief ruler of Wajo States, who
was a woman. I often heard Stein relate how that chap, who was slightly
paralysed on one side, had introduced him to the native court a short
time before another stroke carried him off. He was a heavy man with
a patriarchal white beard, and of imposing stature. He came into
the council-hall where all the rajahs, pangerans, and headmen were
assembled, with the queen, a fat wrinkled woman (very free in her
speech, Stein said), reclining on a high couch under a canopy. He
dragged his leg, thumping with his stick, and grasped Stein's arm,
leading him right up to the couch. "Look, queen, and you rajahs, this is
my son," he proclaimed in a stentorian voice. "I have traded with your
fathers, and when I die he shall trade with you and your sons."

'By means of this simple formality Stein inherited the Scotsman's
privileged position and all his stock-in-trade, together with a
fortified house on the banks of the only navigable river in the country.
Shortly afterwards the old queen, who was so free in her speech, died,
and the country became disturbed by various pretenders to the throne.
Stein joined the party of a younger son, the one of whom thirty years
later he never spoke otherwise but as "my poor Mohammed Bonso." They
both became the heroes of innumerable exploits; they had