One day, one of these Sarawak Rangers, with a gang of his friends, all young men, went on a holiday excursion to some fruit gardens in the suburb of Kuching. They came to a tempting-looking fruit orchard, full of ripe oranges, mangosteens, custard apples, pine-apples, etc., fenced in by rotten railings and owned by an old Chinaman. All fruit is dear to native hearts, for they are essentially a fruit-eating people. The youths, seeing these tempting morsels, demolished the palings, entered the garden, and began eating the fruit. The noise they made hacking at the trees brought the old man out of his house built in the orchard. He remonstrated with the thieves, who took no notice, so he raised his voice in order to elicit the help of passers-by on the road. This so exasperated the youths, who were bent on carrying off some of the old man’s fruit, that in a fit of anger the Ranger drew his parang[8] (he was in mufti), and killed the Chinaman. Realizing what he had done, he took to his heels, followed by his friends, leaving the Chinaman in a pool of blood under the fruit trees, where he was found by the Rajah’s police--an efficient body of Malays under the command of an English officer. The crime was brought home to the Ranger, who was brought to justice and condemned to death. On the morning of the man’s execution, the Rajah had arranged to go for a visit to the Batang Lupar River. I was to go with him, and the guard chosen to accompany him happened to include the brother of the man who was to be executed that day. The Instructor in charge of the men informed the Rajah that the prisoner’s brother was in a very excited state, and had been heard by the natives speaking rather wildly in the barracks. I believe he even expressed himself as ready to take vengeance on the Government which had condemned his brother to death. The Instructor suggested to the Rajah that it might not be quite safe to have this man included in his personal bodyguard. “On the contrary,” said the Rajah, “for that very reason let him come with us.” Needless to say, the man did accompany us and behaved himself perfectly, and by the time we returned to Kuching he had proved himself to be one of the most exemplary members of the Rajah’s bodyguard.