“Then turn out a black battalion to stop for us. We'll need 'em, old man.”
The Governor straightened his back. “Give ear, O people!” he cried. “I make a new Law!”
The villagers closed in. He called:—
“Henceforward I will give one dollar to the man on whose land Abu Hussein is found. And another dollar”—he held up the coin—“to the man on whose land these dogs shall kill him. But to the man on whose land Abu Hussein shall run into a hole such as is this hole, I will give not dollars, but a most unmeasurable beating. Is it understood?”
“Our Excellency,” a man stepped forth, “on my land Abu Hussein was found this morning. Is it not so, brothers?”
None denied. The Governor tossed him over four dollars without a word.
“On my land they all went into their holes,” cried another. “Therefore I must be beaten.”
“Not so. The land is mine, and mine are the beatings.”
This second speaker thrust forward his shoulders already bared, and the villagers shouted.
“Hullo! Two men anxious to be licked? There must be some swindle about the land,” said the Governor. Then in the local vernacular: “What are your rights to the beating?”