"Pardon, but I must tell-a you my dreaming. It was of a woman's life I dreamed." Carter laughed shortly. "I think you had better leave it at that. It sticks in my mind that the three Portuguese ladies in this factory at Mokki are all officially protected by their lawful husbands, and I don't want to hear any embarrassing confidences." "And may not a Portuguese gentleman, poor-a I grant you, but still of good blood, give-a his affection to a lady of another race?" A moon had lit up in the sky above, and under it Cartels jaw looked of a sudden more square and grim than usual--at least the other thought so. His tone, too, changed from banter to something hard. "I decline to hear another word on the matter. We will confine our dealings with one another entirely to details of business, if you please, Cascaes, and leave matters of sentiment alone. Here is your gun. You say you are a gentleman, and I believe you. That means you won't shoot me from behind, or when I'm not armed equally with yourself. If the necessity arrives for a turn-up on level terms, I'm your man. Good-night." And so for that night they parted, each very much misunderstanding the other. Once more the tired sentries yawned at their posts, and the Europeans of the factory retired to their beds, and the blacks to their sleeping mats; but sleep for the rest of that hot, damp night was broken, and no half-hour passed without a cry from some dreamer which woke restless echoes from his neighbors. But with daylight the steady stream of merchandise, which the factory was beginning to attract, recommenced. The native traders of the hinterland had their hands full of the stock that had been pouring in upon them ever since the King of Okky had closed the roads to the old Coast factories with which they were accustomed to deal, and when the news spread, as it does spread in that mysterious West Africa, that the white woman of Mokki bought and sold in spite of the King's teeth, they were only too ready to back her with their custom. The merchants of that unknown back country are some of the keenest traders on earth. Some came in single canoes through the gloom and odors of uncharted muddy creeks, trusting to secrecy for safe passage; others joined forces, and brought armed flotillas of great sixty-man-power dugouts down the main stream; others clubbed together into caravans, so strong and so well-defended that even Kallee's truculent raiders dared not cross the Okky marches to hold them up. So marvellously accurate were the rumors that had spread up country, that few of these keen merchants came into Mokki without a grass basket full of spoiled specimens of butterfly as a "dash" to propitiate the new trading power.