Strange Stories

ionaries, so that Ethel found a habitable dwelling ready for her at the end of her long boat journey up the rapid stream of the Ancobra. There the strangely matched pair settled down quietly e

ilments like a woman; she leaned on him as a wife leans on the strong arm of her husband. And then he was so clever, so wise, so learned. Her only grief was that she feared she was not and would never be good enough for him. Yet it was well for her that they were living so enti

ided them. He cherished her like some saintly thing, too sacred for the common world. Yet Ethel was his helper in all his work, so cheerful under the necessary privations of their life, so ready to put up with bananas and cassava balls, so apt at kneading plantain paste, so willing to learn from the negro women all the mysteries

ay of setting to work to learn the native language. He had left the country when he was nine years old, he said, and ha

he say?"

only I listen; but the curious thi

all. You are so quick at languages, and

I have never recalled a word of it for all these

to you so easily in that way. You almost learned Portuguese

ne years old when he was taken to England, and it was no great wonder that he should recollect the language he had heard in his childhood till that age. Still, he himself noti

rs killed and sold their reeking goat-meat. Ethel saw him start again, and with a terrible foreboding in her heart, she could not help asking him why he started. "I c

ered her, with something like pallor on his dark

elat

ears ago. Let us say no more about it." And Ethel, looking at that ga

n in a sort of way to sympathize with it or apologize for it. One morning, a month or two later, he spoke to her voluntarily of his father. He had never done so in England. "I can remember," he said, "he was a chief, a great chief. He had many wives, and my mother was one. He was beaten in War by Kola, and I was

iting till the catechist and his wife should come in to prayers, for they carried out their accustomed ceremony decorously, even there, every night and morning. Suddenly they heard the din of savage music out of doors, and the

said Ethel, s

no harm. It's only the people amusing themselves." And he began

ing music! It's like a drum and fife band; it's like the bagpipes; it's like a military march. By Jove, it compels one to dance!" And he got up a

Ethel. "Suppose the cat

rge with cutlasses; here you hack them down before you; here you hold up your enemy's head in your hands, and here you kick it off among t

Christian, it isn't human, it isn't worthy of you. I c

eping back to her like a whipped spaniel, "Ethie, my darling, my own soul, my beloved; what have I done! Oh, heav

d penitent. Ethel lifted him gently, and at that moment the catechist and his wife came in. John stood up firmly, took down his Bible and Prayer-book, and rea

g out, put it conspicuously in the midst of the storeroom, and said nothing. That night she heard John in the jungle behind the yard, and looking out, she saw dimly that he was hacking the keg to pieces vehemently with an axe. After that he was even kinder and tenderer to her than usual for the next week, but Et

truth flashed across her bewildered mind like a hideous dream. She went out, alone, at night, as she had never done before since she came to Africa, into the broad lane between the huts which constituted the chief street of Butabué. So far away from home, so utterly solitary among all those black faces, so sick at heart with that burning and devouring horror! She reeled and staggered down the street, not knowing how or where she went, till at the end, beneath the two tall date-palms, she saw lights f

ivided to right and left, and John Creedy saw his wife standing there like a marble figure. With one awful cry he came to himself again, and rushed to her side. She did not repel him, as he expected; she did not speak; she was mute and cold like a corpse, not like a living woman. He took her up in his stron

oked at her, and said,

on had brought it out suddenly in full force. She lay unconscious upon the bed, her eyes open

n his hand, gave a few directions in Fantee to the woman at the beds