Sometimes, however, jealousy will prevail, in spite of these preventives, and has been known to lead to fatal results. One case of poisoning has already been mentioned (page 51), and others occur more frequently than is known. One such case was a rather remarkable one. There had been two wives, and a third was afterward added. The other two wives felt themselves injured by her presence, and for a year subjected her to continual persecution. One day, when the husband returned to his house, he found her absent, and asked from the others where she was. They replied that they did not know, and that when they went to fetch firewood, according to daily custom, they had left her in the kraal. Dissatisfied with the answer, he pressed them more closely, and was then told that she had gone off to her father’s house. At the first dawn he set off to the father’s kraal, and found that nothing had been heard of her. His next step was to go to one of the witch doctors, or prophets, and ask him what had become of his favorite wife. The man answered that the two elder wives had murdered her. He set off homeward, but before he reached his kraal, the dead body of the murdered wife had been discovered by a herd boy. The fact was, that she had gone out with the other two wives in the morning to fetch firewood, a quarrel had arisen, and they had hanged her to a tree with the bush-rope used in tying up the bundles of wood. As to minor assaults on a favorite wife, they are common enough. She will be beaten, or have her face scratched so as to spoil her beauty, or the holes in her ears will be torn violently open. The assailants are sure to suffer in their own turn for their conduct, their husband beating them most cruelly with the first weapon that happens to come to hand. But, in the mean time, the work which they have done has been effected, and they have at all events enjoyed some moments of savage vengeance. Fights often take place among the wives, but if the husband hears the noise of the scuffle he soon puts a stop to it, by seizing a stick, and impartially belaboring each combatant. The position of a first wife is really one of some consequence. Although she has been bought and paid for by her husband, she is not looked upon as so utter an article of merchandise as her successors. “When a man takes his first wife,” says Mr. Shooter, “all the cows he possesses are regarded as her property. She uses the milk for the support of her family, and, after the birth of her first son, they are called his cattle. Theoretically, the husband can neither sell nor dispose of them without his wife’s consent. If he wish to take a second wife, and require any of these cattle for the purpose, he must obtain her concurrence.”