“No! no!  He must not come!”

“Then we will go to see him again?”

“Yes, darling Jack!”

“With my friend Dick—­and Hercules—­and old Tom?”

“Yes! yes!” replied Mrs. Weldon, putting her head down to hide her tears.

“Has papa written to you?” asked little Jack.

“No, my love.”

“Then you are going to write to him, mother?”

“Yes—­yes—­perhaps!” replied Mrs. Weldon.

And without knowing it, little Jack entered directly into his mother’s thoughts.  To avoid answering him further, she covered him with kisses.

It must be stated that another motive of some value was joined to the different reasons that had urged Mrs. Weldon to resist Negoro’s injunctions.  Perhaps Mrs. Weldon had a very unexpected chance of being restored to liberty without her husband’s intervention, and even against Negoro’s will.  It was only a faint ray of hope, very vague as yet, but it was one.

In fact, a few words of conversation, overheard by her several days before, made her foresee a possible succor near at hand—­one might say a providential succor.

Alvez and a mongrel from Oujiji were talking a few steps from the hut occupied by Mrs. Weldon.  It is not astonishing that the slave-trade was the subject of conversation between those worthy merchants.  The two brokers in human flesh were talking business.  They were discussing the future of their commerce, and were worried about the efforts the English were making to destroy it—­not only on the exterior, by cruisers, but in the interior, by their missionaries and their travelers.

Jose-Antonio Alvez found that the explorations of these hardy pioneers could only injure commercial operations.  His interlocutor shared his views, and thought that all these visitors, civil or religious, should be received with gun-shots.

This had been done to some extent.  But, to the great displeasure of the traders, if they killed some of these curious ones, others escaped them.  Now, these latter, on returning to their country, recounted “with exaggerations,” Alvez said, the horrors of the slave-trade, and that injured this commerce immensely—­it being too much diminished already.

The mongrel agreed to that, and deplored it; above all, concerning the markets of N’yangwe, of Oujiji, of Zanzibar, and of all the great lake regions.  There had come successively Speke, Grant, Livingstone, Stanley, and others.  It was an invasion!  Soon all England and all America would occupy the country!

Alvez sincerely pitied his comrade, and he declared that the provinces of Western Africa had been, till that time, less badly treated—­that is to say, less visited; but the epidemic of travelers was beginning to spread.  If Kazounde had been spared, it was not so with Cassange, and with Bihe, where Alvez owned factories.  It may be remembered, also, that Harris had spoken to Negoro of a certain Lieutenant Cameron, who might, indeed, have the presumption to cross Africa from one side to the other, and after entering it by Zanzibar, leave it by Angola.