I have touched upon divorce in some detail, as many re-marriages under all the conditions given above occurred, and some family records became a hopeless tangle to all but those immediately concerned. When the new Soudan Government comes to settle up claims to properties, they will be confronted with a collection of “succession” puzzles to solve, for one woman might be the proud mother of the legitimate heirs of three or four different people, and being, as the widow and mother of the heritor, entitled to a fixed proportion of the properties, you |192| may be quite sure that she will fight to the death for her sons’ interests. Hasseena ought not to have been in the interesting state she declared she was, for we had been separated for a much longer period than that ordained by law. I was obliged to tell her that if she empanelled a jury, after the example of Idris es Saier, all the explanations they might offer would not convince me that I held any more relationship to the child than I did to Makkieh, and there was nothing now to induce me to claim the paternity,—indeed just the reverse. However, if Hasseena was with child, I should be bound to keep her for at least two years, and if the Khaleefa sent on his present, I should have two households to support on ten dollars a month. When making my plans for escape, Hasseena was included; she was to have got away on the same dromedary as myself. When my guides returned, they would find me with two wives, and having made arrangements for one only, they might demur at taking the two. The probabilities were they would abandon the thing altogether, fearing that one or the other might betray them, which meant instant execution for them and imprisonment for me. If I kept Hasseena, she might steal from some stranger, as the houses of my friends were now closed to her, and then I should be sent back to the Saier; if I sent her away, she, knowing my guides and all my arrangements, would be the first to meet them on arrival in Omdurman, and would insist upon coming away with me under threats of disclosing the plot. It was a most awkward fix for me |193| to be placed in; but after considering the whole matter most carefully, I decided upon sending Hasseena off, and trusting to luck for the rest. I had hoped she might get married to some one in Omdurman, and then I should not have been afraid of her. But Hasseena returned in February, 1892, some months after my marriage with Umm es Shole, carrying a little bundle of male humanity, who had only been three or four months less tardy in arrival than Makkieh.