When a criminal is caught stealing in a man’s house, the course of justice is more speedy. The owner may kill him on the spot, and he has the sanction of the law for doing so. The friends of the criminal cannot complain. The thief deserved his doom for he was behaving like a bewitcher—he had put himself beyond the pale of human rights, and was in the position of a lion or a leopard. This holds good whether the theft is by night or by day, whether the criminal is killed in the house or after a long pursuit. The thief is generally well armed—a circumstance which makes his capture more dangerous. But the injured party, for the purpose of extorting a great ransom, often tries to secure the criminal. On succeeding, he puts the captive in a slave-stick and sends a message to the headman of his village, who will be glad to pay several slaves in order to redeem his “brother”. Should the headman refuse to pay the ransom the unfortunate “brother” is left entirely in the hands of the prosecutor, and is liable to be killed, sold, or retained as a slave. When it is known to what village the stolen “property” was taken, as in cases of kidnapping, the injured party applies at once to the headman of the guilty village, and if he can get no satisfaction, there arises a state of war. The prosecutor captures the very first inhabitants of the guilty village that come into his power, and then he keeps them in slave-sticks until compensation is made. Here is a case where a lingering imprisonment falls on persons that are entirely innocent, the only thing against them being that they belong to a guilty village. SUMMARY. As native law is rather intricate, we give the following summary of ordinary procedure in criminal cases. _Detection._ The criminal (1) may be caught in the act, (2) may be known to have the stolen goods in his possession, (3) may be detected by the sorcerer, or (4) may be convicted on the confession of himself, or (5) the statements of his accomplices and others. This last case (5) shows that, after all, the natives cannot exclude testimony, and even in case (3) the sorcery must derive all its value from ordinary evidence. The sorcerer has, doubtless, many agents that are more useful than his calabash, although it is for his interest to represent that all other evidence is of little value as compared with his own inspiration. _Proof._ In cases (1), (2), (4), no trial is needed. In cases (3) and (5) the mwai is appealed to. _Punishment._ The criminal is either killed or fined; imprisonment is rather a preliminary step. In some cases, as in the poison ordeal, a fine is demanded over and above the death. For all fines the headman of the criminal’s village is responsible, but he can repay himself either from the criminal or his relatives. He may even pay the criminal over to the injured party, but in this case he loses a subject who may be related either to himself or to some influential man in his village.