For more than a year I taught the school daily without any assistance except that one or two of the advanced boys sometimes taught the junior classes. Then I engaged, as an assistant, a Mpongwe, named Nduna, a boy of seventeen years, whose father, Rekwangi, was quite civilized and an old friend of our mission. Poor Nduna’s life ended very tragically less than two years later. He was a handsome boy, of quiet disposition and kind-hearted. He was with me so much in the schoolroom and was so faithful in his work that I came to know him well and to like him. At the end of the year he told me that he had the offer of a better-paying position in one of the bureaus of the government at Libreville and I advised him to accept it. I understood that he gave good satisfaction to his employer. After several months a sum of money was stolen from a safe that had accidentally been left open. There were French clerks in the same office, but Nduna was the only native. He was immediately arrested. There was not a shred of evidence against him except that the money had been stolen from that particular office and that he was the only native there. It was hard for me to believe that he was guilty even before I had heard the evidence, and when I supposed that it must be strongly against him. But when upon inquiry I learned all that was known, I concluded with a great many others that he was innocent. And the others did not know him personally as I did. A native may be capable of committing a very clever theft, but I never knew a native who could cleverly conceal it. A certain workman, Ndinga, stole a coat from me, and a few days later walked into the yard with it on. Ndinga was not intelligent like Nduna. But I knew another boy who about the same time stole a considerable amount of cash from a white man. He was a very clever rascal, and proved himself so in the procuring of the money. Yet he carried it in his pocket as long as it lasted (which was only a few days) and treated all his friends with lavish generosity. Among themselves the detective faculty is dull. And this is probably because they so readily resort to supernatural means of discovering a criminal, instead of following a natural clue, or weighing the evidence of circumstances against a suspected person. While the white man racks his brains with mere probabilities, the native goes to the witch-doctor, who promises him certainty. The witch-doctor names several persons, often personal enemies to himself, and they are forced to undergo some ordeal, such as dipping their hands in boiling oil, which will burn only the guilty. It is an easy and expeditious method, and especially remunerative for the witch-doctor. But it involves none of those mental operations whereby facts are weighed, comparisons made and conclusions reached. The judgmatical faculty lies dormant. It would not therefore be expected that the thief would be as careful of his tracks as if he lived in the land of Sherlock Holmes.