“You are Mr. Olympio?” I said as I shook his hand. “Quite right,” he replied in a singularly soft and musical voice, adding, “I bid you welcome to Adena. Will you please to come in?” I followed him into the house, a mud-built thatched cottage of three rooms, and immediately became aware of an aromatic and savoury odour, and perceived with great content that preparations--of a somewhat primitive nature indeed--had been made for a meal. I was not the only guest, it appeared, for, as I entered, a native in European dress--what is locally known as a “scholar man”--rose to greet me. He was the very antithesis of Olympio--big, burly, black as the ace of spades, and full of the boisterous humour and high spirits of the typical African; and as he gripped me by the hand and bid me welcome to Adena his joy overflowed in little gurgles of laughter. “Glad to see you, Mr. Englefield,” he said in a deep buzzing bass. “I hear your name plenty time but never see you. Now I see you very fine gentleman. Ha! ha! ha!” Here he leered at Olympio, who keckled softly and rubbed his hands. “Mr. Englefield smell de palaver sauce, hey! Olympio?” continued my new friend, whose name, by the way, was David Annan. “You like dis country chop, sah?” I replied that I had very little acquaintance with African cookery. “Aha! no! You no get fine country wife like Olympio to make you palaver sauce. Dis yer Olympio he sabby what be good. He sabby fine chop, fine liquor, fine girl. He very bad man, sah, ha! ha!” He laughed uproariously, and certainly the picture of the little wizened mulatto in the character of a _bon vivant_ and lady-killer was not without its comic side. But these flights of wit were cut short by the appearance of a handsome, light-coloured Fanti woman who carried a deep, black clay dish, and was followed by a procession of small girls and boys each bearing some adjunct to the feast, and soon the little table, with its red and yellow-striped cloth, groaned under a burden of delicacies. The black dish was filled with a gorgeous orange-coloured palm oil stew, while smaller but similar receptacles exhibited such dainties as kiki, or okro stew, rolls of fufu, looking like gelatinous suet puddings, stuffed egg-fruit, large red capsicums and piles of green and red chillis.