“Why should you come bothering Kapeni, the men live beside yourselves?” Soon after this the assassins were captured, but although Kumlomba insisted, “Give them over to us and we will kill them,” which would have been native law pure and simple, the Europeans that were present, not being accustomed to see human beings killed with so little ceremony, refused to do so. By this step they did credit to their own humane feelings, but they transgressed native custom. Kumlomba was but ill satisfied when about a month after, in the execution of native justice, he levelled his musket at one of the men—the other having meanwhile escaped. His view was that besides killing this man he ought to have got “six people”. The six people, or slaves, he fixed as the ransom of the person that had escaped. By native law he was entitled to damages of this kind. I have known Kapeni himself concede larger demands. One effect of the execution was to bring in an enormous number not only of slave refugees but also of free people who wanted to live near the English. In a short time the population of Kumlomba’s village became about five times as many. The slaves that escaped were aware that they exposed themselves to the danger of assassination. But at the beginning of this case had not one Missionary of the greatest standing told them that an Englishman considered the life of a black person as precious as his own life, and that it was a murderer himself that ought to die for his deed, and not “two or three” of his slaves (96)? In this unsettled land these statements somehow were much prized both by bond and free. Another effect of the case was to terrify Kapeni from coming to Blantyre. Happening to be at Kapeni’s about a month after, I found him from home. I asked his son when he was coming to see us, and received the answer, “The Ndilande people say that they will kill him if he go to Blantyre”. The Ndilande people had wished Kapeni to be more decided, and to refuse to negociate against them. The old man had wavered. In such circumstances a native must feel it hard to come to a conclusion. He cannot tell by inspection which course will be most for his interest. Nor can he talk with any certainty of eternal and immutable morality. No wonder that amidst this thick darkness and painful suspense he attempts to confer with the spirits of his fathers (14).