"I'm dashed if I can understand it!" said Sanders, knitting his brows, when the last report came in. "With anybody but the Ochori this would mean war. But the Ochori!" Notwithstanding his contempt for their fighting qualities, he kept his Police Houssas ready. But there was no war. Instead, there came complaint from the Akasava that "many leopards were in the woods." Leopards will keep, thought Sanders, and, anyway, the Akasava were good enough hunters to settle that palaver without outside help. The next report was alarming. In two weeks these leopards had carried off three score of goats, twenty bags of salt, and much ivory. Leopards eat goats; there might conceivably be fastidious leopards that cannot eat goats without salt; but a leopard does not take ivory tusks even to pick his teeth with. So Sanders made haste to journey up the river, because little things were considerable in a country where people strain at gnats and swallow whole caravans. "Lord, it is true," said the chief of the Akasava, with some emotion, "these goats disappear night by night, though we watch them; also the salt and ivory, because that we did not watch." "But no leopard could take these things," said Sanders irritably. "These are thieves." The chief's gesture was comprehensive. "Who could thieve?" he said. "The N'Gombi people live very far away; also the Isisi. The Ochori are fools, and, moreover, afraid." Then Sanders remembered the egg games, and the midnight manoeuvres of the Ochori. "I will call on this new chief," he said; and crossed the river that day. Sending a messenger to herald his coming, he waited two miles out of the city, and the councillors and wise men came out to him with offerings of fish and fruit. "Where is your chief?" he asked. "Lord, he is ill," they said gravely. "This day there came to him a feeling of sickness, and he fell down moaning. We have carried him to his hut." Sanders nodded. "I will see him," he said grimly. They led him to the door of the chief's hut, and Sanders went in. It was very dark, and in the darkest corner lay a prostrate man. Sanders bent over him, touched his pulse lightly, felt gingerly for the swelling on the neck behind the ears for a sign of sleeping sickness. No symptom could he find; but on the bare shoulder, as his fingers passed over the man's flesh, he felt a scar of singular regularity; then he found another, and traced their direction. The convict brand of the Monrovian Government was familiar to him. "I thought so," said Sanders, and gave the moaning man a vigorous kick. "Come out into the light, Bosambo of Monrovia," he said; and Bosambo rose obediently and followed the Commissioner into the light. They stood looking at one another for several minutes; then Sanders, speaking in the dialect of the Pepper Coast, said-- "I have a mind to hang you, Bosambo." "That is as your Excellency wishes," said Bosambo.