Turning into a small house some little way along the street, she led him through a comfortably but roughly furnished parlour, into a bed-room at the rear, where lay a baby boy not more than eighteen months old, and whom his medical experience soon assured him was suffering from a slight attack of that most malignant disease, diphtheria.
Knowing, through Grenville, that the old hermit had acted in the capacity of physician and surgeon to both slavers and natives, Kenyon, before he left the cavern, had provided himself with several articles, including a small case of phials, likely to be of use in supporting his assumption of the character of a medical practitioner; and, briefly directing the young mother to keep the child quiet and supply him with cooling drinks, he carefully painted the tonsils with perchloride of iron, and left her instructions to continue this treatment.
As Kenyon, however, was moving away, the grateful mother again stopped him. “Father,” she said, “I call thee such by permission; canst thou do naught for yon poor woman whom these cruel, heartless Mormons have condemned to death by fire, because she will not change her faith and ‘marry’ one of their own creatures. Thou knowest my history, my father; how I was stolen away when but a girl, and wedded to a man I used to hate, and that my happiest hour was when he died in battle. Yet do I love my little son, and could I but give freedom to this woman I would fly the country with her, and take refuge with the brave men of my own race who have escaped hence, and who now hold Zero at defiance.”
“Where lies this woman, my daughter?” said the false hermit, after making a show of thinking carefully for some little time.
“Still in the same strong place, my father—the great hall of the common prison-house; and at noon, next day but one, she suffers at the stake. Save her, if thou canst, my father; and if it be indeed beyond thy power, then give her, in mercy, a draught of swift and deadly poison, if thou hast such, and earn a double blessing from her ere she dies.”
With a promise that he would endeavour on the following night to see the condemned one referred to, our adventurer at length got away from the importunate woman, and effected, undiscovered, his retreat to the well, and thence into the depths of the mountain, where he, of course, found the Zulu on guard, the pair being soon after this relieved by Umbulanzi and the young Scotsman, Ewan, of whom all had formed a high opinion, both as to shrewdness and bravery.
Arrived in the cave above, Kenyon communicated to his astonished and admiring friends his experiment and the result of it, and all then fell to eagerly discussing ways and means for the rescue of the poor condemned woman from her villainous judges and would-be executioners; and, ere the party lay down to sleep, it was decided that Kenyon should make an attempt to see her the following night in his character of a priest, and learn what suggestions the captive could herself make, with regard to a plan to save her life and give her back her liberty.