Tom was ready to stay anywhere. He sank down on the ground, and lay, resting and watching the further proceedings of his rescuer. The lad cut down a number of young pliable branches, trimmed them to the same length, and stuck them into the ground in a circle, at equal intervals apart, bending them at the top until all met. Then he wound long grasses and tendrils of creepers in and out around the whole circumference, until in a surprisingly short space of time he had fashioned a rough and ready circular hut at the corner of the clearing, which was almost completely hidden by rank growths of vegetation. He smiled with pride in his handiwork when he invited Tom to enter. "Come back bimeby," he cried, and darted away into the forest. When he returned he brought a wild gourd full of water and a handful of berries. "No can get nuffin else," he said deprecatingly. "They will do very well," said Tom, who indeed could have eaten sawdust after his long fast. "Now tell me who you are, and how you found me, and why you are helping me." The smile that spread over the lad’s face awoke in Tom a dormant memory. Surely this was the boy who had rushed so eagerly to pick up his match-box a day or two after he had reached the plantation. "Sah sabe Mwesa, Mwesa sabe sah," said the negro, happily. "Save! What do you mean?" "On boat, sah: German man kick, say frow me in water: sah pay cash, all right all same." "Oh!" exclaimed Tom, feeling a touch of embarrassment. That little unconsidered act of kindness had surely not won such devotion as to bring the boy into slavery for his sake? "Tell me about yourself," he said. The negro’s story, told in his strange English, took a long time in the telling, so roundabout was the course of the narrative, so much broken by explanations and cumbered by trifling details. But the gist of it, as understood by Tom, was as follows-- Mwesa was the son of Miluma, once a notable chief of the Wahehe, and one of those who had sustained for a long time the resistance of his people to the Germans. At length he had fallen into the enemy’s hands, and had been among the first batch of labourers who had cleared the ground for Reinecke’s plantation. Miluma’s wife and two of his children had died under their hardships, and the chief, left with Mwesa alone, had fled with the boy, and, more lucky than other negroes, had neither been recaptured nor killed in the forest. He had fallen in with an English trader, with whom he had taken service, accompanying him in his journeys through the country of the Great Lakes, and living at other times among his native household at Zanzibar. Mwesa, only a few years old at the period of the escape, had at first remained in Zanzibar during his father’s absence, but at the age of twelve he, too, had travelled with the Englishman’s caravan, and had picked up a smattering of English as well as of the dialects of the tribes through whose countries he had passed.