I need not enter into the details, but a certain sum of money over which he had control had disappeared.

I will merely say, therefore, that at the time he was engaged to a coloured lady of very expensive tastes, whom in the end he never married.
After this, as it chanced, he nursed me through an illness.

Hence the attachment of which I have spoken.
Sammy was the son of a native Christian preacher, and brought up upon what he called "The Word." He had received an excellent education for a person of his class, and in addition to many native dialects with which a varied career had made him acquainted, spoke English perfectly, though in the most bombastic style.

Never would he use a short word if a long one came to his hand, or rather to his tongue.

For several years of his life he was, I believe, a teacher in a school at Capetown where coloured persons received their education; his "department," as he called it, being "English Language and Literature." Wearying of or being dismissed from his employment for some reason that he never specified, he had drifted up the coast to Zanzibar, where he turned his linguistic abilities to the study of Arabic and became the manager or head cook of an hotel.