e know (though this is not in the Blue Books) that Bosambo called
together all his petty chiefs and his headmen, from one end of the
country to the other, and assembled them squatting expectantly at the
foot of the little hillock, where sat Bosambo in his robes of office
(unauthorized but no less magnificent), their upturned faces charged
with pride and confidence, eloquent of the hold this sometime Liberian
convict had upon the wayward and fearful folk of the Ochori.

Now no man may call a palaver of all small chiefs unless he notifies the
government of his intention, for the government is jealous of
self-appointed parliaments, for when men meet together in public
conference, however innocent may be its first cause, talk invariably
drifts to war, just as when they assemble and talk in private it drifts
womanward.

And since a million and odd square miles of territory may only be
governed by a handful of ragged soldiers so long as there is no
concerted action against authority, extemporized and spontaneous
palavers are severely discouraged.

But Bosambo was too cheery and optimistic a man to doubt that his action
would incur the censorship of his lord, and, moreover, he was so filled
with his own high plans and so warm and generous at heart at the thought
of the benefits he might be conferring upon his patron that the
illegality of the meeting did not occur to him, or if it occurred was
dismissed as too preposterous for consideration.

And so there had come by the forest paths, by canoe, from fishing
villages, from far-off agricultural lands near by the great mountains,
from timber cuttings in the lower forest, higher chiefs and little
chiefs, headmen and lesser headmen, till they made a respectable crowd,
too vast for the comfort of the Ochori elders who must needs provide
them with food and lodgings.

"Noble chiefs of the Ochori," began Bosambo, and Notiki nudged his
neighbour with a sharp elbow, for Notiki was an old man of forty-three,
and thin.

"Our lord desires us to give him something," he said.

He was a bitter man this Notiki, a relative of former chiefs of the
Ochori, and now no more than over-head of four villages.

"Wa!" said his neighbour, with his shining face turned to Bosambo.

Notiki grunted but said no more.

"I have assembled you here," said Bosambo, "because I love to see you,
and because it is good that I should meet those who are in authority
under me to administer the laws which the K