In this case, however, many of the non-committal statements pieced together formed important corroborative evidence, and that, together with other evidence, satisfied the Court as to the guilt of six of the accused, who were found guilty of murder. The sentence on four of them was publicly carried out at the town of Imperri on 18th April, 1913. The fifth and sixth, who were domestic slaves, were also found guilty of murder and sentenced to death, but the sentences, on the recommendation of the Court, were afterwards commuted by the Governor-in-Council to life imprisonment. The Lavari to the principal accused was found guilty of being an accessory after the fact to the murder and was sentenced to life imprisonment. [Illustration: A NATURAL BRIDGE ON THE ROAD TO GBANGBAMA.] There is little doubt that but for the chance overhearing by the District Commissioner’s clerk that a boy had been killed by a leopard this crime would never have been brought to light. After a time, when all trace of evidence had vanished, it would have been given out that the boy had been killed by a bush leopard. And this story would have been all the more difficult to disprove from the fact that in that neighbourhood leopards abound. Within a few hundred yards of where the Court sat was a leopard trap, whilst during the hearing of this particular case at least two leopards were shot within a mile of the Court barri. CHAPTER V THE KABATI CASE The next case dealt with was the one known as the Kabati Case, from the village where the murder took place. In this and the following cases Lieut.-Colonel H. G. Warren sat in place of Mr. Van der Meulen, who proceeded on leave. Originally fifty-six persons had been charged and committed for trial on a charge of murder. The person murdered was a young woman named Mini, and the murder took place in or about the month of May, 1911, at Kabati, a small village in the Northern Sherbro District of the Protectorate. As in the previous case, sufficient corroborative evidence to support the stories told by accomplices, who were the chief witnesses for prosecution, could not be obtained, and the Crown Prosecutor decided to proceed against only three of the prisoners, entering a _nolle prosequi_ on the capital charge against the remainder. These latter were subsequently prosecuted, and a number of them were found guilty of being members of an unlawful society. Of the three men proceeded against two were men of importance in the Protectorate; the first accused was a paramount chief or Mahawa, and the second was a sub-chief or Mahawuru, the third accused being a brother of the Mahawuru. The girl Mini was weak in intellect, but to what extent it was not easy on the evidence to say. She was the niece of the second accused, the Mahawuru, and for some time prior to the murder had formed a member of his household. The story told by the witnesses for the Crown was as follows: