While these events were taking place at Hammamet, Colonel Moulin was conducting a column from Kairwán through the Enfida estate, which had been almost forgotten in the excitement of the more striking events of the two expeditions. My readers will remember that in a former chapter we left Mr. Levy in undisturbed possession of the property under a legal order of the Sheikh-el-Islam, who had been encouraged by the presence of the “Thunderer” and “Decoy” to resist the moral pressure gently conveyed to his judicial mind by the appearance of French ironclads in Tunisian waters. The time had now come to attain one of the avowed objects of the war, and place the coveted estate with some show of decency and legal procedure in the hands of M. Saint-Hilaire’s “honest and laborious Marseilles company.” Shortly after the signing of the Kasr-es-Said Treaty, the agents of the French claimants, accompanied by the French interpreter Sumaripa, paid a visit to the Sheikh-el-Islam, to judge of his present intentions. As the old man proved to be refractory, the Société Marseillaise next turned in its dilemma to the now docile Prime Minister Mustapha. The Meliki school of Moslem jurisprudence ignored, or regarded with disfavour, the exercise of pre-emption, and if the case could be transferred to the Meliki judges they would have no difficulty in conscientiously nonsuiting Mr. Levy. It was true that in the British Convention of 1863 the religious courts, and not the Bey himself, were declared to have jurisdiction in disputes relating to real property, and it was unfortunate that the Meliki Court had already declared itself incompetent, but still under existing circumstances these were mere details. Mustapha explained matters to the Bey, who _proprio motu_ issued a decree removing the suit from the Hanafee to the Meliki tribunal. The rest was now comparatively easy, but meanwhile the Arabs had cut matters short by driving every European out of the district. The legal manœuvres at Tunis went on, however, undisturbed by the anarchy which now reigned all over the Regency. On the 20th July the enlightened Meliki _cadís_ published, as an evidence of their impartiality, an _ex parte_ manifesto in the Tunisian Government Gazette, declaring that as Mr. Levy had no right of pre-emption, the Société Marseillaise must be regarded as the legal owner.