hat little gazelle.

The very next day after this sad event the travellers came to a native
village, at which they stayed a night, in order to rest and procure
fresh provisions. The trader was well-known at this village, but the
natives, all of whom were black, of course, and nearly naked, had never
seen a little white girl before, so that their interest in and wonder at
Ailie were quite amusing to witness. They crowded round her, laughing
and exclaiming and gesticulating in a most remarkable manner, and taking
special notice of her light-brown glossy hair, which seemed to fill them
with unbounded astonishment and admiration; as well it might, for they
had never before seen any other hair except the coarse curly wool on
their own pates, and the long lank hair of the trader, which happened to
be coarse and black.

The child was at first annoyed by the attentions paid her, but at last
she became interested in the sooty little naked children that thronged
round her, and allowed them to handle her as much as they pleased, until
her father led her to the residence of the chief or king of the tribe.
Here she was well treated, and she began quite to like the people who
were so kind to her and her friends. But she chanced to overhear a
conversation between the doctor and Tim Rokens, which caused her
afterwards to shrink from the negroes with horror.

She was sitting on a bank picking wild-flowers some hours after the
arrival of her party, and teaching several black children how to make
necklaces of them, when the doctor and Rokens happened to sit down
together at the other side of a bush which concealed her from their
view. Tim was evidently excited, for the tones of his voice were loud
and emphatic.

"Yes," he said, in reply to some questions put to him by the doctor;
"yes, I seed 'em do it, not ten minutes agone, with my own two eyes.
Oh! but I would like to have 'em up in a row--every black villain in the
place--an' a cutlass in my hand, an'--an' wouldn't I whip off their
heads? No, I wouldn't; oh, no, by no means wotiver."

There was something unusually fierce in Rokens' voice that alarmed
Ailie.

"I was jist takin' a turn," continued the sailor, "down by the creek
yonder, when I heerd a great yellin' goin' on, and saw the trader in the
middle of a crowd o' black fellows, a-shakin' his fists; so I made sail,
of course, to lend a hand if he'd got into trouble. He was scoldin'
away in the native lingo, as if he'd