Sanders was smoking a thin cigar, and he smoked for fully a minute without saying a word, and a minute was a very long time. Then he stepped to the grave, stooped, and lifted the baby up awkwardly, for he was more used to handling men than babes, gave it a little shake to clear it of earth, and handed it to a woman. "Take the child to its mother," he said, "and tell her to send it to me alive in the morning, otherwise she had best find a new husband." Then he turned to the old chief and his son. "Old man," he said, "how many years have you to live?" "Master," said the old man, "that is for you to say." Sanders scratched his chin reflectively, and the old man watched him with fear in his eyes. "You will go to Bosambo, chief of the Ochori, telling him I have sent you, and you shall till his garden, and carry his water until you die," said Sanders. "I am so old that that will be soon," said the old man. "If you were younger it would be sooner," said Sanders. "As for your son, we will wait until the morning." The Houssas in the background marched the younger man to the camp Sanders had formed down river--the boat that had passed had been intended to deceive a chief under suspicion--and in the morning, when the news came that the child was dead--whether from shock, or injury, or exposure, Sanders did not trouble to inquire--the son of the chief was hanged. I tell these stories of Sanders of the River, that you may grasp the type of man he was and learn something of the work he had to do. If he was quick to punish, he acted in accordance with the spirit of the people he governed, for they had no memory; and yesterday, with its faults, its errors and its teachings, was a very long time ago, and a man resents an unjust punishment for a crime he has forgotten. It is possible to make a bad mistake, but Sanders never made one, though he was near to doing so once. Sanders was explaining his point of view in regard to natives to Professor Sir George Carsley, when that eminent scientist arrived unexpectedly at headquarters, having been sent out by the British Government to study tropical disease at first hand. Sir George was a man of some age, with a face of exceptional pallor and a beard that was snowy white. "There was a newspaper man who said I treated my people like dogs," said Sanders slowly, for he was speaking in English, a language that was seldom called for. "I believe I do. That is to say, I treat them as if they were real good dogs, not to be petted one minute and kicked the next; not to be encouraged to lie on the drawing-room mat one day, and the next cuffed away from the dining-room hearthrug." Sir George made no answer. He was a silent man, who had had some experience on the coast, and had lived for years in the solitude of a Central African province, studying the habits of the malarial mosquito.