owards his descendants. Now, before John was despatched to instruct
Owen in the language of the Amasuka a certain girl was sealed to him
as his future wife, and this girl, who during his absence had been
orphaned, he had married recently with the approval of Owen, who at
this time was preparing her for baptism. On the third morning after his
marriage John appeared before his master in the last extremity of grief
and terror.

"Help me, Messenger!" he cried, "for my ancestral spirit has entered our
hut and bitten my wife as she lay asleep."

"Are you mad?" asked Owen. "What is an ancestral spirit, and how can it
have bitten your wife?"

"A snake," gasped John, "a green snake of the worst sort."

Then Owen remembered the superstition, and snatching blue-stone and
spirits of wine from his medicine chest, he rushed to John's hut. As it
happened, he was fortunately in time with his remedies and succeeded
in saving the woman's life, whereby his reputation as a doctor and a
magician, already great, was considerably enlarged.

"Where is the snake?" he asked when at length she was out of danger.

"Yonder, under the kaross," answered John, pointing to a skin rug which
lay in the corner.

"Have you killed it?"

"No, Messenger," answered the man, "I dare not. Alas! we must live with
the thing here in the hut till it chooses to go away."

"Truly," said Owen, "I am ashamed to think that you who are a Christian
should still believe so horrible a superstition. Does your faith teach
you that the souls of men enter into snakes?"

Now John hung his head; then snatching a kerry, he threw aside the
kaross, revealing a great green serpent seven or eight feet long. With
fury he fell upon the reptile, killed it by repeated blows, and hurled
it into the courtyard outside the house.

"Behold, father," he said, "and judge whether I am still superstitious."
Then his countenance fell and he added: "Yet my life must pay for this
deed, for it is an ancient law among us that to harm one of these snakes
is death."

"Have no fear," said Owen, "a way will be found out of this trouble."

That afternoon Owen heard a great hubbub outside his kraal, and going to
see what was the matter, he found a party of the witch-doctors dragging
John towards the place of judgment, which was by the king's house.
Thither he followed to discover that the case was already in course of
being opened before the king, his council, and a vast audience of
the people