Two other cases came to my personal knowledge—one a wholesale affair of the kind already referred to. Chekusi had been ill; and Mandala (apparently just then on exceptionally good terms with him) sent for a number of people to the royal kraal, and administered the ordeal to find out who had bewitched him. Among those who went from Ntumbi were two old men mentioned in a previous chapter—Pembereka and Kaboa. The former died—Kaboa either recovered or he did not drink the poison, which, however, is unusual, and, I fancy, unprecedented; and, if I understood him rightly, it is surprising that he should have been allowed to depart without further trouble. What he said to me was, ‘I refused’ (_ndakana_), which might, however, conceivably mean that his system had rejected the drug. The mourning for poor old Pembereka continued at his kraal for two or three days, and subsequently his family went up to Chekusi’s to finish the mourning there and (we were told) to drink _mwavi_, but on what grounds I never made out: in any case there was no further fatality. As we have already seen, those who die by _mwavi_ are not usually buried, but cast out to be eaten by wild beasts; we gathered from rumours which reached us that this was not done in Pembereka’s case, but that he was buried at Chekusi’s. The other case was a local one: a young girl died suddenly—possibly of pneumonia or rapid consumption; she was delicate, but seemed in fairly good health when we last saw her, about three months before her death. Her father, the Ntumbi head-man, made a number of people drink _mwavi_, and one young man died—_chifukwa wodiera antu_, as my informant said—‘because he was an eater of men.’ It is possible, however, that there might have been more deaths in this case but for the action of an English planter who heard of the matter in time and came to the rescue with ipecacuanha. A case which all the older residents in British Central Africa will remember took place at Blantyre. Mr. John Moir, at that time manager of the African Lakes Company, got wind of the trial and arrived on the scene when matters were already so far advanced that it seemed best to act first and explain afterwards. Accordingly, he began by kicking over the doctor’s mortar, and then set forth his views on the subject. He succeeded in getting the proceedings quashed, but—and this is the interesting feature in the story—the rescued victim considered himself ever afterwards to have a standing grievance against Mr. Moir. He was a local head-man of some standing, and complained that, as he had not been allowed the opportunity of clearing his character, he was under a cloud and likely to remain so for the rest of his life. His people were leaving him and settling elsewhere—no one cared to be associated with a person of such doubtful reputation—in short, he was a ruined man!