The thought of what my friend’s face would be like if I returned to Bathurst without his steed, was quite enough, and I hurried out of the village to the spot where I had left the animal. He was nowhere to be seen. I felt then that I was up a tree of considerable altitude. If I went back to Bathurst for police, the thief would decamp in my absence; and, even if he obligingly remained to be caught, the delay of the law is such that I should miss my passage by the steamer, which was to sail next day. When I thought of my stupidity in leaving my horse, I began to have an uncomfortable conviction that my guide’s estimate of my character was correct; and I thought I should have to submit to his extortion after all. While still deliberating on the probable results of a violent assault on this amiable negro, a happy idea occurred to me. I knew that in every Mohammedan town there was a head-man, or alcaid, who, in those that were independent, was magistrate, governor, and arbitrator in general, and answerable for the preservation of order to the Mandingo king; while in those nominally subject to the British, such as Bakko, he settled disputes between the natives, and regulated the charges made against strangers for food and lodging; so I said to my extortioner, who had followed me out of the village-- “I shall go to the head-man.” My forlorn hope told; his countenance fell almost to zero; and without waiting to consider that I did not know the alcaid, or where to find him, and that if I did succeed in finding him I could not make him understand my complaint, as I could not speak his language, he said, sulkily, “Well, I don’t want to make trouble, you can pay half.” “I shall do nothing of the sort.” “Give me five shillings, and the palaver’s set.” “Certainly not.” “Master, dash me two shillings for the boy that hold the horse, and I go fetch him.” I thought it would not do to push my advantage too far, so I agreed to these terms, and in a few minutes this scoundrel brought out, from the penetralia of some hovel in the village--my missing steed. I climbed into the saddle, threw the money at the man’s head, and then, with my whip--but no, I won’t say what I did, or I shall have the “poor black brother society” of Exeter Hall down on me. It is sufficient to say that I rode off in a more happy frame of mind, though still annoyed to think that after the many years during which I had been acquainted with the negro I should have been such an idiot as to imagine that a Christianized and English-speaking low-class specimen of the species could be polite and obliging without having some ulterior scheme of insult or extortion in view.