278 AN AFRICAN CROCKFORD'S. 



as paint lies upon the skin. Let us take a walk 

 through that same village on another day. Here, in 

 a hut, is a young man with one leg in the stocks, and 

 with his right hand bound to his neck by a cord. 

 The palm wine, and the midnight dance, and the 

 furtive caresses of Asua overpowered his discretion ; 

 he was detected, and now he is " put in log." If his 

 relations do not pay the fine, he will be sold as a 

 slave ; or if there is no demand for slaves in that 

 country, he will be killed. His friends reprove him 

 for trying to steal what the husband was willing to 

 sell ; and might he not have guessed that Asua was 

 a decoy ? 



Another day the palaver-house has the aspect of a 

 Crockford's. An old man, who is one of the village 

 grandees, is spinning nuts for high stakes, and has 

 drunk too much to see that he is overmatched. He 

 loses his mats, his weapons, his goats, and his fowls, 

 his plantation, his house, his slaves whom he took 

 prisoners in his young and warlike days, his wives, 

 and his children, and his aged mother who fed him at 

 her breast, — all are lost, all are gone. And then, 

 with flushed eyes and trembling hand, he begins to 

 gamble for himself. He stakes his right leg, and 

 loses it. He may not move it until he has won it 

 back, 01 until it is redeemed. He loses both legs ; he 

 stakes his body, and loses that also, and becomes a 

 bond-servant, or is sold as a slave. 



Let us give another scene. A young man of 

 family has died ; the whole village is convulsed with 

 grief and fear. It does not appear natural to them 

 that a man should die before he has grown old. 

 Some malignant power is at work among them. Is 

 it an evil spirit whom they have unwittingly offended, 



