The chief was kept in solitary confinement from the day when he was brought down to Pietermaritzburg, December 31st, till the day when his sons were sentenced, February 27th; not being allowed to converse with any of his sons, or with any members of his tribe, or with any friend or adviser, white or black. It was therefore quite out of his power to find witnesses who would have shown, as Mnyembe and Gayede would have done, that Mawiza’s statements about the “stripping” were false; that he still wore his waistcoat, shirt, trousers, boots, and gaiters, when he was taken to the chief; and that the “stripping” in question only amounted to this, that he himself put off his two coats, by the chiefs orders, “as a matter of precaution caused by fear” and not for the purpose of insulting the messenger, or defying the Supreme Chief. They would have satisfied the court also that other acts charged against the prisoner arose from fear, and dread of the Supreme Chief, and not from a spirit of defiance. This affair of the messenger, explained by fear and suspicion on the part of Langalibalele, by which, also, he accounted for his refusal to “appear before” the Supreme Chief (which is to say that, being desired to give himself up into the hands of the Government, he was afraid to do so, and ran away), was the turning-point of the whole trial. What special reason he had for that fear and distrust will be inquired into shortly. Meanwhile the court considered that such expressed distrust of the good faith of the authorities was an added offence on the part of the prisoner, who was formally condemned to death, but his sentence commuted to banishment for life to Robben Island, the abode of lunatics and lepers, in which other captive native chiefs had languished and died before him.[25] CHAPTER IV. THE BISHOP’S DEFENCE. The daily accounts of the trial which appeared in the local papers were read with great interest and attention by the Bishop, who quickly discerned the injustice of the proceedings. Mawiza’s manifest contradiction of his own evidence first attracted his attention, and led to his hearing from some of his own natives what was not allowed to appear at the trial, that Mawiza’s story was entirely false. Seeing how seriously this fact bore upon the prisoner’s case, he went to Mr. Shepstone and told him what he had heard.