Another pause, and he said: “I tell you there will be blood spilled!” At this I spoke and said: “We don’t need the help of your people, Amvama; you and I will go, ourselves alone, and will kill all the people of that town. Upon our arrival in the town we will hold a service, and of course everybody will come, and they will come unarmed. After singing one or two hymns I will ask you to offer a prayer; and while you are praying I’ll open fire on the congregation and we’ll make short work of them.” He laughed and said: “I only wished to know what you thought.” “Why, then, did you not ask me?” I said. He replied: “I think I have been asking you ever since I came in.” The people would not give back the dowry, and Amvama would not let it come to a clash of arms; so he surrendered it. But about a year later his brother (more likely a cousin) died, leaving two wives, who by the law of inheritance became Amvama’s property. Both of them were eager to marry him. One of the two was as good a woman as he could have found, and he afterwards married her. The other he gave, with her consent, to a cousin who was single. In the examination of candidates for baptism I had to rely very much upon Amvama’s judgment in regard to those whom he had taught. In one of the towns where he had taught there was a young man who had been a Christian for more than two years and who had attended the classes faithfully; and yet Amvama did not recommend him for baptism. I asked him the reason, and he said that there was only one thing against him, and nothing else; he was lazy—so lazy that he was ridiculed in the whole town. Amvama said: “He will bring reproach on his religion. And I think that since his faith enables him to do other things that he did not do before, it ought also to enable him to do a little work.” A few months before Amvama left Ndumentanga, war broke out between that town and a town of the Bifil people, a clan of the Fang who had come but recently from the far interior and were very savage. A Bifil man had stolen a woman of Ndumentanga. The old chief, who was a bloodthirsty heathen, told the town to prepare for war. But he found a rival in Amvama who advised that they must first make every effort to get the woman back without shedding blood, which could probably be done through her father’s influence. Amvama also told them that the fetishes upon which they were depending for protection were useless.