ssen and her husband
dead there was no one in all the world with a desire to succour her who
knew where she might be found.

Rokoff's threat, she realized, was no idle one. That he would do, or
attempt to do, all that he had promised, she was perfectly sure; but at
the worst it meant but a little earlier release from the hideous
anguish that she had been enduring. She must find some way to take
her own life before the Russian could harm her further.

Just now she wanted time--time to think and prepare herself for the
end. She felt that she could not take the last, awful step until she
had exhausted every possibility of escape. She did not care to live
unless she might find her way back to her own child, but slight as such
a hope appeared she would not admit its impossibility until the last
moment had come, and she faced the fearful reality of choosing between
the final alternatives--Nikolas Rokoff on one hand and self-destruction
upon the other.

"Go away!" she said to the Russian. "Go away and leave me in peace
with my dead. Have you not brought sufficient misery and anguish upon
me without attempting to harm me further? What wrong have I ever done
you that you should persist in persecuting me?"

"You are suffering for the sins of the monkey you chose when you might
have had the love of a gentleman--of Nikolas Rokoff," he replied. "But
where is the use in discussing the matter? We shall bury the child
here, and you will return with me at once to my own camp. Tomorrow I
shall bring you back and turn you over to your new husband--the lovely
M'ganwazam. Come!"

He reached out for the child. Jane, who was on her feet now, turned
away from him.

"I shall bury the body," she said. "Send some men to dig a grave
outside the village."

Rokoff was anxious to have the thing over and get back to his camp with
his victim. He thought he saw in her apathy a resignation to her fate.
Stepping outside the hut, he motioned her to follow him, and a moment
later, with his men, he escorted Jane beyond the village, where beneath
a great tree the blacks scooped a shallow grave.

Wrapping the tiny body in a blanket, Jane laid it tenderly in the black
hole, and, turning her head that she might not see the mouldy earth
falling upon the pitiful little bundle, she breathed a prayer beside
the grave of the nameless waif that had won its way to the innermost
recesses of her heart.

Then, dry-eyed but suffering, she rose a