“Some of us may. I don't expect to see the padre alive to-morrow, nor Miss Adams either. They are not made for this sort of thing, either of them. Then, again, we must not forget that these people have a trick of murdering their prisoners when they think that there is a chance of a rescue. See here, Belmont, in case you get back and I don't, there's a matter of a mortgage that I want you to set right for me.” They rode on with their shoulders inclined to each other, deep in the details of business.
The friendly negro who had talked of himself as Tippy Tilly had managed to slip a piece of cloth soaked in water into the hand of Mr. Stephens, and Miss Adams had moistened her lips with it. Even the few drops had given her renewed strength, and, now that the first crushing shock was over, her wiry, elastic, Yankee nature began to reassert itself.
“These people don't look as if they would harm us, Mr. Stephens,” said she. “I guess they have a working religion of their own, such as it is, and that what's wrong to us is wrong to them.”
Stephens shook his head in silence. He had seen the death of the donkey-boys, and she had not.
“Maybe we are sent to guide them into a better path,” said the old lady. “Maybe we are specially singled out for a good work among them.”
If it were not for her niece her energetic and enterprising temperament was capable of glorying in the chance of evangelising Khartoum, and turning Omdurman into a little well-drained, broad-avenued replica of a New England town.
“Do you know what I am thinking of all the time?” said Sadie. “You remember that temple that we saw,—when was it? Why, it was this morning.”
They gave an exclamation of surprise, all three of them. Yes, it had been this morning; and it seemed away and away in some dim past experience of their lives, so vast was the change, so new and so overpowering the thoughts which had come between them. They rode in silence, full of this strange expansion of time, until at last Stephens reminded Sadie that she had left her remark unfinished.
“Oh, yes; it was the wall picture on that temple that I was thinking of. Do you remember the poor string of prisoners who are being dragged along to the feet of the great king,—how dejected they looked among the warriors who led them? Who could,—who could have thought that within three hours the same fate should be our own? And Mr. Headingly——,” she turned her face away and began to cry.
“Don't take on, Sadie,” said her aunt; “remember what the minister said just now, that we are all right there in the hollow of God's hand. Where do you think we are going, Mr. Stephens?”