taught him something of a higher law than that of self-preservation. The
best he had was at the service of his exhausted guests, and, with a
tact and consideration not always found even among Europeans, he
insisted on hearing and sifting all the reports brought in by fugitives
before they reached the ears of Mr. Maples, whose sprain kept him for
some days unable to move.

After all, only seven of the Masasi people had been killed in the first
mad onslaught of the Magwangwara. The rest were saved by strict
obedience to the order to make no resistance. For twelve days the
terrible visitors remained in their camp near the village, while Mr.
Maples' colleague, Mr. Porter, exhausted all his bales of cloth, the
current coin between Europeans and Africans, in ransoming those of his
people who had been seized and carried as slaves to the camp. When at
last the war party retreated, they carried with them twenty-nine of the
Masasi people. Mr. Porter, having replenished his store of cloth, set
off after them, and actually remained a month among the Magwangwara,
bargaining for the freedom of the prisoners. Some of the poor creatures
were already dead, some had escaped, or had passed to other owners, but
Mr. Porter succeeded in ransoming the rest. He must have gone with his
life in his hand, since the Magwangwara believed the heart of a white
man to be an invaluable charm, and had announced their intention of
securing one when starting on their raid. But the quiet tact of the
Englishman conquered the savages, and Mr. Porter returned in safety with
his ransomed people, bearing the blunted spear of the Magwangwara in
token of peace.

Such is the story of the first destruction of Masasi twenty-three years
ago. Of the two Englishmen who stood so stoutly by their people through
those anxious days, one sleeps in his grave by Lake Nyasa, drowned in
the waters of which he wrote with such enthusiastic love. The other, Mr.
Porter, was one of the little group of fugitives, who, on a Sunday night
in August, 1905, turned their backs, with sore hearts, upon the
district, for the agitation was against white men only, and, without
them, the natives would be safe from attack.

CREBILLON AND THE RAT.

Claude De Crebillon, son of the well-known French poet of that name, and
himself a man of letters of some merit, had been sent to the prison of
St. Vincent on account of his writings. The first night he spent there
he had scarcely fallen as