omrade, Dick Sand, again. His young imagination was very much
affected, and only lived in those remembrances. To his questions Mrs.
Weldon could only reply by pressing him to her heart, while covering
him with kisses. All that she could do was not to cry before him.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Weldon had not failed to observe that, if bad
treatment had been spared her during the journey from the Coanza,
nothing in Alvez's establishment indicated that there would be any
change of conduct in regard to her. There were in the factory only
the slaves in the trader's service. All the others, which formed
the object of his trade, had been penned up in the barracks of the
_tchitoka_, then sold to the brokers from the interior.

Now, the storehouses of the establishment were overflowing with stuffs
and ivory. The stuffs were intended to be exchanged in the provinces
of the center, the ivory to be exported from the principal markets of
the continent.

In fact, then, there were few people in the factory. Mrs. Weldon and
Jack occupied a hut apart; Cousin Benedict another. They did not
communicate with the trader's servants. They ate together. The food,
consisting of goat's flesh or mutton, vegetables, tapioca, _sorgho_,
and the fruits of the country, was sufficient.

Halima, a young slave, was especially devoted to Mrs. Weldon's
service. In her way, and as she could, she even evinced for her a kind
of savage, but certainty sincere, affection.

Mrs. Weldon hardly saw Jose-Antonio Alvez, who occupied the principal
house of the factory. She did not see Negoro at all, as he lodged
outside; but his absence was quite inexplicable. This absence
continued to astonish her, and make her feel anxious at the same time.

"What does he want? What is he waiting for?" she asked herself. "Why
has he brought us to Kazounde?"

So had passed the eight days that preceded and followed the arrival
of Ibn Hamis's caravan--that is, the two days before the funeral
ceremonies, and the six days that followed.

In the midst of so many anxieties, Mrs. Weldon could not forget that
her husband must be a prey to the most frightful despair, on not
seeing either his wife or his son return to San Francisco. Mr. Weldon
could not know that his wife had adopted that fatal idea of taking
passage on board the "Pilgrim," and he would believe that she had
embarked on one of the steamers of the Trans-Pacific Company. Now,
these steamers arrived regularly, and neither Mrs. Weld