A MURDEB. 157 little girl about ten years old. One day her master coming in, found that she had taken and eaten three ground-nuts. He was furious, and asked her how she had dared to eat without his leave ; her answer might surely have touched the- hardest heart : " You are my father, and I was very hungry." But nothing availed to pacify him ; seizing a club, he dashed out her brains, and at night had her dead body carried away and thrown into the jungle. For this offence he was executed, and surely he justly deserved his punishment ; but at Khartoum this was one of the cases brought forward by the Arabs as a complaint against Gressi. " What right had he," they said, " to hang a man for killing his own slave ? Can we not do as we like with our own ? " One morning Gressi Pasha complained to one of his little boys, named Munza, whose business it was to look after the fowls, that there were so few eggs ; he thought some must be stolen. The boy assured him that this was not the case, and said the fowls were to blame. No more was heard about it till the afternoon, when we were much amused by seeing the boy's way of punishing the fowls for their negligence in not laying the proper number of eggs. He had put on each a shouber, which is a Y-shaped piece of wood, such as is used to prevent the slaves running away. It was almost impossible for the fowls to move about or to feed, but after this there were always plenty of eggs.