"I am on a brief visit," he said, a note of deference in his tone. "I am taking the small towns and villages along the coast, holding services, and I desire permission to speak to your people." This was not the speech he had prepared. He had come straight from England, where he had been something of a lion in Bayswater society, and where, too, his theological attainments had won him regard and no small amount of fame in even a wider circle. "You may speak to my people," said Sanders; "but you may not address the Kano folk nor the Houssas, because they are petrified in the faith of the Prophet." Regaining his self-possession, the missionary smiled. "To bring light into dark places----" he began. "Cut it out," said Sanders briefly; "the palaver is finished." He turned on his heel and re-entered the bungalow. Then a thought struck him. "Hi!" he shouted, and the retiring missionary turned back. "Where did you pick up the 'Kenneth McDolan'?" he asked. The negro smiled again. "It is the patronymic bestowed upon me at Sierra Leone by a good Christian white man, who brought me up and educated me as though I were his own son," he recited. Sanders showed his teeth. "I have heard of such cases," he said unpleasantly. The next day the missionary announced his intention of proceeding up country. He came in to see Sanders as though nothing had happened. Perhaps he expected to find the Commissioner a little ashamed of himself; but if this was so he was disappointed, for Sanders was blatantly unrepentant. "You've got a letter from the Administration," he said, "so I can't stop you." "There is work for me," said the missionary, "work of succour and relief. In India some four hundred thousand----" "This is not India," said Sanders shortly; and with no other word the native preacher went his way. Those who know the Akasava people best know them for their laziness--save in matter of vendetta, or in the settlement of such blood feuds as come their way, or in the lifting of each other's goats, in all which matters they display an energy and an agility truly inexplicable. "He is an Akasava man--he points with his foot," is a proverb of the Upper River, and the origin of the saying goes back to a misty time when (as the legend goes) a stranger happened upon a man of the tribe lying in the forest. "Friend," said the stranger, "I am lost. Show me the way to the river"; and the Akasava warrior, raising a leg from the ground, pointed with his toe to the path. Though this legend lacks something in point of humour, it is regarded as the acme of mirth-provoking stories from Bama to the Lado country.