The stories came filtering through, extraordinary stories of people who had been punished unjustly, of savage floggings administered by order of the sub-commissioner, and Sanders took boat and travelled up the river _hec dum_. He landed short of the town, and walked along the river bank. It was not an easy walk, because the country hereabouts is a riot of vegetation. Then he came upon an African idyll--a young man, who sat playing on a squeaky violin, for the pleasure of M'Lino, lying face downwards on the grass, her chin in her hands. "In the name of a thousand devils!" said Sanders wrathfully; and the boy got up from the fallen tree on which he sat, and looked at him calmly, and with no apparent embarrassment. Sanders looked down at the girl and pointed. "Go back to the village, my woman," he said softly, for he was in a rage. "Now, you magnificent specimen of a white man," he said, when the girl had gone--slowly and reluctantly--"what is this story I hear about your flogging O'Sako?" The youth took his pipe from his pocket and lit it coolly. "He beat M'Lino," he said, in the tone of one who offered full justification. "From which fact I gather that he is the unfortunate husband of that attractive nigger lady you were charming just now when I arrived?" "Don't be beastly," said the other, scowling. "I know she's a native and all that sort of thing, but my people at home will get used to her colour----" "Go on board my boat," said Sanders quietly. "Regard yourself as my prisoner." Sanders brought him down to headquarters without troubling to investigate the flogging of O'Sako, and no word passed concerning M'Lino till they were back again at headquarters. "Of course I shall send you home," said Sanders. "I supposed you would," said the other listlessly. He had lost all his self-assurance on the journey down river, and was a very depressed young man indeed. "I must have been mad," he admitted, the day before the mail boat called _en route_ for England; "from the very first I loved her--good heavens, what an ass I am!" "You are," agreed Sanders, and saw him off to the ship with a cheerful heart. "I will have no more sub-commissioners at Isisi," he wrote acidly to the Administration. "I find my work sufficiently entertaining without the additional amusement of having to act as chaperon to British officials." He made a special journey to Isisi to straighten matters out, and M'Lino came unbidden to see him. "Lord, is he gone, too?" she asked. "When I want you, M'Lino," said Sanders, "I will send for you." "I loved him," she said, with more feeling than Sanders thought was possible for a native to show. "You are an easy lover," said Sanders. She nodded. "That is the way with some women," she said. "When I love, I love with terrible strength; when I hate, I hate for ever and ever--I hate you, master!" She said it very simply. "If you were a man," said the exasperated Commissioner, "I would tie you up and whip you."