Close to the common cell was an offshoot of it—a smaller one named “Bint Umm Hagar” (the daughter of Umm Hagar), which took the place of the condemned cell in Europe. On my return to prison, I learned that my old enemy, Kadi Ahmed, had been confined there for a year. The ostensible reason for his imprisonment was that he had been in league with the false coiners, and had made large amounts of money; but the real reason was that the Khaleefa was angry with him on account of the death of Zecki Tummal, who had conducted the Abyssinian campaign when King John was killed. Kadi Ahmed had been induced by Yacoub to sentence Zecki to imprisonment and starvation; so when Ahmed’s turn came, the Khaleefa said, “Let him receive the same punishment as Zecki.” He was placed in the Bint Umm Hagar, and after about ten months the doorway was built up; there Ahmed was left, with his ablution bottle of water only, for forty-three days according to one tale, and fifty days according to another. When, for days, no sounds had been heard from his living tomb, he was presumed to be dead; but on the doorway being opened up, to the astonishment, not to say superstitious fear, of all, he was still alive, but unconscious, though the once big fat Kadi had wasted to a skeleton. |222| Abdullahi must have received a fright too, for he ordered Ahmed to be tenderly nursed and given small doses of nourishing food every twenty-four hours, until the stomach was able to retain food given oftener; but in spite of all care and attention, the Kadi died on or about May 3, 1895. He was regretted by no one but the Khaleefa, in whose hands he had been a willing tool, dispensing justice(?) as his master dictated it, only to die the lingering death in the end to which he had condemned so many at his master’s nod. Kadi Ahmed’s place in the “Bint” was soon taken by his successor—Kadi Hussein Wad Zarah. His offence was that of refusing to sentence people unjustly, when ordered by the Khaleefa and Yacoub to do so. When first walled up in his tomb, he was given, through a small aperture left for the purpose, a little food and water every four or five days, but towards the end of July, 1895, the doorway was built up entirely, and Zarah, not being a big stout man like Ahmed, starved, or rather parched, to death in about twenty-two or twenty-three days. It is hot in the Soudan in July. [Illustration: NEUFELD’S HUT IN THE SAIER, SHOWING THE FAMOUS ANVIL.]