After that the daughter cooked porridge, and brought some[82] and gave her brother fowl for a relish. Then her brother refused the fowl and said, “I will eat of the bird to my porridge”. As he ate he began to grow the horns of a rhinoceros, and a tail. His sister heard[82] a breaking of plates and cried, “Tembo, what are you doing?” Then he came out of the house and began to chase his sister. His sister began to sing, “Mother you are in the field, Tembo has become a rhinoceros. But your daughter is not a rhinoceros.” The woman said, “My husband, a person is coming and singing a song: perhaps it is our children”. But her husband struck her[83] and said, “You are lazy, you do not want to hoe”. The wife said, “No, I am not lazy,” and soon they heard it again. And they saw their daughter coming running from a rhinoceros. The father took his gun and killed the rhinoceros.[84] Such was the fate of the disobedient boy.[85] FOOTNOTES [1] After the subject of Civil Jurisdiction was re-adjusted by Commissioners sent out for the purpose, criminal cases were specially considered by a lay superintendent in the Mission, and the offenders were kept in slave-sticks by the headman of some of the Blantyre villages. Any headman performed this task with great zest when the offender was an alien, but when obliged to confine one of his own people (his ‘brothers’), he grumbled very much. [2] One of the last cases where a flogging was proposed, took place in the following manner:—A drunk man threatened to make a martyr of one Englishman whom he attacked with an axe. After a struggle, however, he was caught and laid past for a flogging. When told of the matter I was very anxious that the poor fellow should be spared this. He was a native doctor—a man of some standing among his tribe. Fortunately the white man that had been assaulted was one who could make allowance for a native. Next night I got hold of an interpreter and went to reason with the prisoner, pointing out that he had forgotten himself, and was most likely to feel the consequences. I explained that I was sorry for him, but that I could do nothing to help him, and that the only way of escaping was to tell the injured party that he was sorry for what had happened. I don’t know how he worded his apology, but next morning he was described as having been let off because he was so very penitent!