"Write to him?" repeated his mother, "that is the very thing I was thinking about."
The child little knew the agitation that was troubling her mind.
Meanwhile Mrs. Weldon had another inducement which she hardly ventured to own to herself for postponing her final decision. Was it absolutely impossible that her liberation should be effected by some different means altogether?
A few days previously she had overheard a conversation outside her hut, and over this she had found herself continually pondering.
Alvez and one of the Ujiji dealers, discussing the future prospects of their business, mutually agreed in denouncing the efforts that were being made for the suppression of the slave-traffic, not only by the cruisers on the coast, but by the intrusion of travellers and missionaries into the interior.
Alvez averred that all these troublesome visitors ought to be exterminated forthwith.
"But kill one, and another crops up," replied the dealer.
"Yes, their exaggerated reports bring up a swarm of them," said Alvez.
It seemed a subject of bitter complaint that the markets of Nyangwé, Zanzibar, and the lake-district had been invaded by Speke and Grant and others, and although they congratulated each other that the western provinces had not yet been much persecuted, they confessed that now that the travelling epidemic had begun to rage, there was no telling how soon a lot of European and American busy-bodies might be among them. Thedépôts at Cassange and Bihe had both been visited, and although Kazonndé had hitherto been left quiet, there were rumours enough that the continent was to be tramped over from east to west. [Footnote: This extraordinary feat was, it is universally known, subsequently accomplished by Cameron.]
"And it may be," continued Alvez, "that that missionary fellow, Livingstone, is already on his way to us; if he comes there can be but one result; there must be freedom for all the slaves in Kazonndé."