Chief Gobe is known in the country about his town as a rich man; but misfortune overtakes him. Sickness carries off all his cattle and sheep; the rice-crop fails, and famine sets in; his neighbor raids his town, destroys it, and carries off his wife and slaves. Gobe, how- ever, sets about mending his fortune so cheerfully, that he is a wonder to his people. “Thus,” says old Yakporo, the village soothsayer, “should every true man meet trouble. When the teeth in a man’s mouth protrude so that he seems always to grin, one can never tell when his face wears the death-grin.”