“Well, he greeted me courteously, with reserve, but with a suggestion of curious eagerness. I marked it at once. Not, however, till the usual questions as to my journeys and so on were over, did I get a clue to the cause of it. But then, when we were seated on stools by the great stone I have mentioned, big clay beakers of thin, delicious light beer beside us, he put a question. ‘Why have you been so long a time coming, my father?’ he asked. ‘A little later and you would have been too late.’
“I was slightly puzzled, but I supposed he referred to the length of my journey. ‘The way was long and rough, chief,’ said I.
“‘But why were you so long in setting out?’ he persisted. ‘Mwezi has been expecting you for many years.’ He turned to an old councillor. ‘How many years has Mwezi been expecting the father?’
“‘Since the days of the Great One, the father of the King,’ said the old man. ‘Mwezi came first among us when I was a boy.’
“Now most of this was Greek to me, but the speaker was fifty if he was a day, whatever allowance was to be made for the early ageing of Africans, and you may imagine that I understood enough to be surprised. ‘How could that be, chief?’ I asked. ‘When this old man was a boy, I had not crossed the black water to come to this land, and possibly I had not been born. Truly of this Mwezi I knew nothing, but how could he expect me whom even my mother had not seen?’
“The chief looked worried, and stared at me for awhile in silence. Then he nodded thoughtfully. ‘It is true,’ he said. ‘The father is doubtless wise and has seen years, but his beard is not white and the thing is strange. Nevertheless he wears the black robe and the dried beans, and he carries the book in his hand, even as Mwezi has said. Still, I have sent for Mwezi, and doubtless he will explain the matter. See, he comes; slowly, for he is very old. Does the father not remember him at all?’
“He pointed down the path that led up to us from the town, into which had come a small crowd of natives who were eagerly following three or four figures, jostling each other to get a better view. It soon became plain that a young man led the way, and that after him came three of whom I guessed the central person to be Mwezi. I think he was the oldest native I have ever seen, bent, shrivelled, and stiff-jointed, but with keen dark eyes which, a little later, fixed themselves inquiringly on my face and then clouded with acute disappointment. On either side his sons helped him with a hand beneath his arm-pits, and he himself walked by means of a great stick. The crowd of hangers-on stopped respectfully below, but these four climbed up to the dais. A stool was brought for the old man, but at first he would not sit. He stood there, staring at me and shaking his head. ‘It is not he,’ he said, ‘it is not he. Yet he is like, very like. But it is not he.’
“I was still perplexed at all this, but by this time a little amused. Nevertheless I hid that, for the old fellow was so plainly disappointed.
“‘Come, father,’ I said. ‘I am very sorry, but will you not explain? Perhaps it is a brother of mine whom you have seen. Seat yourself and tell me about it.’
“He did not seem at once to comprehend, but when his sons had persuaded him to sit, he made a peremptory motion with his stick towards the old councillor who had spoken before. This individual glanced at the chief for permission, and having received it, told me this story at considerable length.