He prays me to hold my hand, first because you have bewitched him into liking you and secondly because if you should happen to be speaking the truth--which we do not believe--and to have come here at the invitation of my brother Dogeetah, he, Dogeetah, would be pained if he arrived and found you dead, nor could even he bring you to life again.

This being so, since it matters little whether you die now or later, my command is that you be kept prisoners till sunset of the second day from this, and that then you will be led out and tied to stakes in the market-place, there to wait till the approach of darkness, by when you say Dogeetah will be here.

If he arrives and owns you as his brethren, well and good; if he does not arrive, or disowns you--better still, for then you shall be shot to death with arrows as a warning to all other stealers of men not to cross the borders of the Mazitu." I listened to this atrocious sentence with horror, then gasped out: "We are not stealers of men, O King, we are freers of men, as Tom and Jerry of your own people could tell you." "Who are Tom and Jerry ?" he asked, indifferently.

"Well, it does not matter, for doubtless they are liars like the rest of you.

I have spoken.