"Here, hold on," he repeated, as he climbed over the fence; but as he reached the ground on the other side he heard the cry repeated from the direction of the hut, and he paused, irresolute.
There might be a repetition of the scene that had occurred when he was called the previous day; the life of this second little creature might be going out like that of the other, and Taylor felt uneasy when he remembered the anguish in the mother's eyes and the wailing sorrow of her voice. If he ran after the man he would escape all that, for it would be over by the time that he returned; but even as the thought passed through his brain he resented it. Something of the feeling he had experienced when he saw his wife clutch at the child came to him, and without further heed for the stranger, he scrambled back over his fence and ran to the hut.
At the door he met the neighbour.
"She wouldn't rest till I called you," she said, jerking her head towards the interior. "Where's the other chap?"
"He's gone on," Taylor answered, as he went into the room and over to the bed where his wife lay.
She looked at him with a soft smile on her face.
"Look at him, Bill," she said, as she lifted the rough coverlet sufficiently to show where the little head was nestled on her arm. "He's come back to me from the other world."
For days Taylor waited, expecting that the man would come back or send word; but as nothing was seen or heard of him, he took counsel with his wife and the neighbour.
"Seems queer, that chap not doing anything," he said one evening, shortly before the neighbour left for her own home. "How will we name him?" he went on, glancing over at the sleeping infant his wife was holding in her arms. "He ain't ours really."