A boy ran to Khama to tell him.  The chief went to the house and strode in.  The room was a wreck.  The men lay senseless with their white shirts stained with blood.

Khama with set, stern face turned and walked to the house where he often went for counsel, the home of his friend, Mr. Hepburn, the missionary.  Mr. Hepburn lay ill with fever.  Khama told him what the white men had done.  Hepburn burned with shame and anger that his own fellow-countrymen should so disgrace themselves.  Ill as he was he rose and went out with the chief and saw with his own eyes that it was as Khama said.

“I will clear them all out of my town,” cried the chief.

It was Saturday night.

Khama’s Decisive Hour

On the Monday morning Khama sent word to all the white men to come to him.  It was a cold, dreary day.  The chief sat waiting in the Kgotla[47] while the white men came together before him.  Hepburn, the missionary, sat by his side.  Those who knew Khama saw as soon as they looked into his grim face that no will on earth could turn him from his decisions that day.

“You white men,"[48] he said to them sternly, “have insulted and despised me in my own town because I am a black man.  If you despise us black men, what do you want here in the country that God has given to us?  Go back to your own country.”

His voice became hard with a tragic sternness.

“I am trying,” he went on, “to lead my people to act according to the word of God which we have received from you white people, and yet you show them an example of wickedness such as we never knew.  You,” and his voice rose in burning scorn, “you, the people of the word of God!  You know that some of my own brothers”—­he was referring to Khamane especially—­“have learned to like the drink, and you know that I do not want them to see it even, that they may forget the habit.  Yet you not only bring it in and offer it to them, but you try to tempt me with it.

“I make an end of it to-day.  Go!  Take your cattle and leave my town and never come back again!”

No man moved or spoke.  They were utterly shamed and bewildered.  Then one white man, who had lived in the town since he was a lad, pleaded with Khama for pity as an old friend.

“You,” said the chief with biting irony, “my friend?  You—­the ringleader of those who despise my laws.  You are my worst enemy.  You pray for pity?  No! for you I have no pity.  It is my duty to have pity on my people over whom God placed me, and I am going to show them pity to-day; and that is my duty to them and to God....  Go!”

And they all went.

Then the chief ordered in his young warriors and huntsmen.

“No one of you,” he said, “is to drink beer.”  Then he called a great meeting of the whole town.  In serried masses thousand upon thousand the Bamangwato faced their great chief.  He lifted up his voice: