ning, a messenger arrived with the
return present, a very little meal, and a few pounds of Livingstone's
own ox, which had been converted into beef in the meantime!

How the cheery-hearted traveller, whose sense of humour helped him
through so much, and whose laugh, Stanley tells us, was 'a laugh of the
whole man, from head to heel,' must have chuckled over the generous gift
of a bit of tough beast which he had brought so many miles along with
him!

But though no stouter-hearted traveller ever pushed his way into the
dark continent, we think less, after all, of Livingstone's heroic
courage than of the burning love for all mankind which sent him into the
waste places of the earth, to carry the truth to those in darkness. We
think of the little orphan girl who hid behind his waggon that she might
travel under his protection to seek her friends: of how he fed her, hid
her from her pursuers, and vowed that, if fifty men came after her, they
should not get her. And there is another story which we shall seek for
in vain in his own account of his life in Africa, but which has been
recorded by one who loved and honoured him.

The incident happened during those happiest days of Livingstone's
African life, when, with his true-hearted wife beside him and children
growing up around him, he lived in the house he had built for himself at
Kolobeng. A very busy, simple life it was, with plenty of occupation to
fill the days: teaching, gardening, building, doctoring, making careful
observations of the plants and animals, and winning the love and
confidence of the native people. One evening, news came to the little
settlement of a furious attack made by a rhinoceros upon the driver of a
waggon. The unfortunate man had been horribly gored; he was lying in the
forest, eight or ten miles away; would the doctor come to him?

The request seemed almost beyond reason, for the night--the terrible
night of Africa--was falling, and those words, 'when all the beasts of
the forest do move,' have a very real meaning in that land. Ten miles'
ride through the dense undergrowth, which might hide every conceivable
enemy, would scare the stoutest heart. But a fellow-creature was
suffering in those horrible shades, and Livingstone was not the man to
weigh the value of the poor native's life against his own. Promptly he
went on his way at the call of duty, but, alas! only to find the man
dead, and his companions gone, and so to ride back again by the sam