From what has already been said, it will be seen that in ordinary procedure formal executions are not common; if the criminal has not been killed red-handed, or if he does not undergo the ordeal, the trial usually ends in a fine, or in his being handed over as a slave to his accusers. But where the chief orders a man to be executed, he is usually stabbed or has his throat cut. Sometimes a wizard is shot at once on being detected by the Mabisalila, and sometimes, when convicted by the ordeal, the crowd fall upon him and lynch him without waiting for the poison to do its work: an outbreak of panic ferocity which has its parallel, in a more deliberate form, in the records of English and Scottish witch-trials. Witches were in former times sometimes burned alive by the Yaos; but Mr. Macdonald says that in his time this was only done if they refused the _mwavi_ test, which was not likely to happen. It was done also by the Anyanja at Likoma, and the stake where these executions took place stood on the site of the present Cathedral. But by far the greater number of cases were left to be decided by the issue of the poison. At one time, the Yaos used to torture the person pointed out by the witch-detective by squeezing his head between two pieces of wood, till he pointed out where the horns were buried; but in later times the Mabisalila found the horns (as already described) as well as naming the witch. But I do not think that this, or judicial torture to extort confession of ordinary crime, is common. An act of sacrilege held to be penal is when a free man sets fire to grass or reeds near a lake supposed to be the abode of a tutelary spirit, in which case he would be thrown into the lake. This perhaps would be rather a sacrifice than an execution. Imprisonment as a punishment is scarcely known, and indeed scarcely possible, though, as has been said, men are sometimes detained in the slave-stick till ransomed or otherwise disposed of. It is a small log with a fork at one end, long enough for the other end to rest on the ground when a man’s neck is inserted into the fork and secured with an iron pin. Slaves are confined in these sticks on the march (as in the familiar picture in Livingstone’s _Zambezi Expedition_), or when they are likely to run away,—or sometimes as a punishment. Debtors, adulterers, and thieves may be put in the slave-stick till their debts or fines are paid up. Slaves, when thus confined, sometimes have the other end of the stick fastened up to a tree, so that they can do their usual work of pounding corn, or the like. There is also a form of stocks called in Yao _ugwalata_, consisting of a hole in the verandah-part of a hut, through which a man’s arm or leg is passed, and secured so that he cannot draw it back. Slaves are sometimes severely beaten.