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other that had sent her mother's heart out to the innocent babe, while still she
suffered from disappointment that she had been deceived in its identity.
"
Have you no idea whose child this is?" she asked Anderssen.
The man shook his head.
"Not now," he said. "If he ain't ban your kid, Ay don' know whose kid he do ban.
Rokoff said it was yours. Ay tank he tank so, too.
"
What do we do with it now? Ay can't go back to the Kincaid. Rokoff would have
me shot; but you can go back. Ay take you to the sea, and then some of these
black men they take you to the ship--eh?"
"No! no!" cried Jane. "Not for the world. I would rather die than fall into the
hands of that man again. No, let us go on and take this poor little creature with
us. If God is willing we shall be saved in one way or another."
So they again took up their flight through the wilderness, taking with them a
half-dozen of the Mosulas to carry provisions and the tents that Anderssen had
smuggled aboard the small boat in preparation for the attempted escape.
The days and nights of torture that the young woman suffered were so merged
into one long, unbroken nightmare of hideousness that she soon lost all track of
time. Whether they had been wandering for days or years she could not tell.
The one bright spot in that eternity of fear and suffering was the little child whose
tiny hands had long since fastened their softly groping fingers firmly about her
heart.
In a way the little thing took the place and filled the aching void that the theft of
her own baby had left. It could never be the same, of course, but yet, day by day,
she found her mother-love, enveloping the waif more closely until she sometimes
sat with closed eyes lost in the sweet imagining that the little bundle of humanity
at her breast was truly her own.
For some time their progress inland was extremely slow. Word came to them
from time to time through natives passing from the coast on hunting excursions
that Rokoff had not yet guessed the direction of their flight. This, and the desire
to make the journey as light as possible for the gently bred woman, kept
Anderssen to a slow advance of short and easy marches with many rests.
The Swede insisted upon carrying the child while they travelled, and in countless
other ways did what he could to help Jane Clayton conserve her strength. He
had been terribly chagrined on discovering the mistake he had made in the
identity of the baby, but once the young woman became convinced that his
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