"Also I built him a hut and gave him a garden, where his wife might
work, and he has sat at family palavers. Now, I tell you that
Yoka-m'furi is an evil man, for he has left my daughter, and has found
another wife in the upper river, and he comes no more to this village,
and my daughter weeps all day.

"For three seasons he has not been to this village; when the moon comes
again, it will be four." He said this with proper significance, and the
flat face of the melancholy girl by his side puckered and creased
miserably before she opened her large mouth to wail her woe.

For the man who deliberately separates himself from his wife for
four seasons and does not spend twenty-four hours--"from sunrise to
moonset" in her village is automatically divorced and freed from all
responsibility. This is the custom of all people from the lands of
the Great King to the sea.

"Now, I have had a dream," Ko-boru went on, "and in this dream it was
told me that I should call you all together, and that I and the chief of
my councillors and friends should go to Sandi and tell him what is
true."

"Brother and uncle," said Bechimi of G'lara, "I will go with you, for
once I spoke to Sandi and he spoke to me, and because of his cunning
memory he will recall Bechimi, who picked up his little black stick,
when it fell, and gave it to him."

Five were chosen to accompany Ko-boru, and they took canoe and travelled
for less than five miles to the Residency.

Sanders was entertaining Patricia Hamilton with stories of native feuds,
when the unexpected deputation squatted in the sun before the verandah.

"O Ko-boru," hailed Sanders, "why do you come?"

Ko-boru was all for a long and impressive palaver, but recognized a
certain absence of encouragement in the Commissioner's tone. Therefore
he came straight to the point.

"Now, you are our father and our mother, Sandi," he said, in conclusion,
"and when you speak, all wonders happen. Also you have very beautiful
friends, Militini, who speak a word and set his terrible soldiers moving
like leopards towards a kill, and Tibbetti, the young one who is
innocent and simple. So I say to you, Sandi, that if you speak one word
to Yoka, he will come back to my daughter, his wife."

Sanders stood by the rail of the stoep and looked down upon the
spokesman.

"I hear strange things, Ko-boru," he said quietly. "They tell me stories
of a woman with many lovers and an evil tongue; and once there came to