Walker pushed forward, came out upon a hillock, fronting the palisade which closed the entrance to the single street of huts, and passed down into the village.  It seemed as though he had been expected.  For from every hut the Fans rushed out towards him, the men dressed in their filthiest rags, the women with their faces chalked and their heads shaved.  They stopped, however, on seeing a white man, and Walker knew enough of their tongue to ascertain that they looked for the coming of the witch doctor.  The chief, it appeared, had died a natural death, and, since the event is of sufficiently rare occurrence in the Fan country, it had promptly been attributed to witchcraft, and the witch doctor had been sent for to discover the criminal.  The village was consequently in a lively state of apprehension, since the end of those who bewitch chiefs to death is not easy.  The Fans, however, politely invited Walker to inspect the corpse.  It lay in a dark hut, packed with the corpse’s relations, who were shouting to it at the top of their voices on the on-chance that its spirit might think better of its conduct and return to the body.  They explained to Walker that they had tried all the usual varieties of persuasion.  They had put red pepper into the chief’s eyes while he was dying.  They had propped open his mouth with a stick; they had burned fibres of the oil nut under his nose.  In fact, they had made his death as uncomfortable as possible, but none the less he had died.

The witch doctor arrived on the heels of the explanation, and Walker, since he was powerless to interfere, thought it wise to retire for the time being.  He went back to the hillock on the edge of the trees.  Thence he looked across and over the palisade and had the whole length of the street within his view.

The witch doctor entered it from the opposite end, to the beating of many drums.  The first thing Walker noticed was that he wore a square-skirted eighteenth century coat and a tattered pair of brocaded knee breeches on his bare legs; the second was that he limped—­ever so slightly.  Still he limped and—­with the right leg.  Walker felt a strong desire to see the man’s face, and his heart thumped within him as he came nearer and nearer down the street.  But his hair was so matted about his cheeks that Walker could not distinguish a feature.  “If I was only near enough to see his eyes,” he thought.  But he was not near enough, nor would it have been prudent for him to have gone nearer.

The witch doctor commenced the proceedings by ringing a handbell in front of every hut.  But that method of detection failed to work.  The bell rang successively at every door.  Walker watched the man’s progress, watched his trailing limb, and began to discover familiarities in his manner.  “Pure fancy,” he argued with himself.  “If he had not limped I should have noticed nothing.”