To This They All Objected, And Insisted That, As We Had
All Acted Contrary To The Laws, We Were All Equally Answerable For
Our Conduct.
I now took my landlord aside, and giving him a small present of
gunpowder, asked his advice in such critical a situation.
He was
decidedly of opinion that I ought not to go to the king: he was
fully convinced, he said, that if the king should discover anything
valuable in my possession, he would not be over scrupulous about the
means of obtaining it.
Towards the evening, as I was sitting upon the bentang chewing
straws, an old female slave, passing by with a basket upon her head,
asked me IF HAD GOT MY DINNER. As I thought she only laughed at me,
I gave her no answer; but my boy, who was sitting close by, answered
for me, and told her that the king's people had robbed me of all my
money. On hearing this, the good old woman, with a look of
unaffected benevolence, immediately took the basket from her head,
and showing me that it contained ground nuts, asked me if I could
eat them. Being answered in the affirmative, she presented me with
a few handfuls, and walked away before I had time to thank her for
this seasonable supply.
The old woman had scarcely left me when I received information that
a nephew of Demba Sego Jalla, the Mandingo king of Kasson, was
coming to pay me a visit.
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