so as to be screwed down, he started up with the energy and gestures of a madman.  His glazed eyes seemed bursting from their sockets, and his upper lip, leaving his teeth bare, gave his mouth the appearance of a horrible and convulsive smile.  He seized my arm with his whole strength; and, as I felt his grasp, and saw him struggling for words, I expected to hear curses and execrations, or the wild howl of an infuriated madman.  I was mistaken.  The wail of a sickly child, who dreads its mother’s departure, was the only sound to which I could compare that wretched man’s voice.  He held me with a force almost supernatural; but his tongue uttered supplications in a feeble monotonous tone, and with the most humble and beseeching manner.  ‘Leave him,’ exclaimed he, ’leave him a little while longer.  He will forgive me; I know he will.  He spoke that horrible word to rouse my conscience.  But I heard him and came back to him.  I would have toiled and bled for him; he knows that well.  Hush! hush!  I cannot hear his voice for my mother’s sobs; but I know he will forgive me.  Oh! father, do not refuse!  I am humble—­I am penitent.  Father, I have sinned against Heaven and before thee—­father, I have sinned!  Oh! mother, he is cursing me again.  He is lifting his hand to curse me—­his right hand.  Look, mother, look!  Save me, O God! my father curses me on his dying bed!  Save me, oh!——­’ The unfinished word resolved itself into a low hollow groan, and he fell back insensible.  I would have assisted him, but his mother waved me back.  ‘Better so, better so,’ she repeated hurriedly; ’it is the mercy of God which has caused this—­do you do your duty, and I will do mine,’ and she continued to kneel and support the head of her son, while we fastened and secured down the coffin.  At length all was finished, and then and not till then we carried the wretched youth from the chamber of death, to one as dark, as gloomy, and as scantily furnished, but having a wood fire burning in the grate, and a bed with ragged curtains at one end of it.  And here, in comparative comfort, the landlady allowed him to be placed, even though she saw little chance of her lodgers being able to pay for the change.  Into the glass of water held to his parched lips, as he recovered his senses, I poured a sufficient quantity of the opiate to produce slumber, and had the satisfaction of hearing his mother fervently thank God, as still half unconscious, he swallowed the draught.  I thought he would not have survived the shock he had received; but I was mistaken.  The merchant was buried and forgotten; the son lived, and we met again in a far, far different scene.”

* * * * *

THE GATHERER.

NOBLES OF JOHANNA.

We had long been aware that the potentates of the Guinea coast not only assume English titles, but wear under, or in place of, diadems, the cast-off wigs of our Lord Chancellors—­but we were not prepared for what follows in the latitude of the Mozambique Channel, as related by Captain Basil Hall.