Ma went to the door and looked up. "There is going to be a storm," she said, "and I have a sickly baby to look after and night will soon be here, but—come along, Janie, we'll go."
Darkness fell ere they reached the spot, and the stars were hidden behind clouds, and they could hardly see a yard in front.
They found the woman lying unconscious on the ground. One of the infants was dead, and Janie dug a hole and buried it. Ma ordered the husband and his slave to make a stretcher, which they did very unwillingly. Then she placed the woman on it and bade them carry her. Still more unwillingly, and grumbling all the time—for they dreaded to touch a twin-mother—they obeyed. Janie lifted the living twin, and all set forth by the light of a piece of fire-stick glowing at the end. This went out, and they stumbled along in the dense darkness. At last they stopped. They had lost themselves. The men laid down their burden and went off to grope for a trail, and Ma and Janie were alone in the eerie forest with the moaning form at their feet.
"Oh, Ma, they may not come back," cried Janie.
"Well, my lassie, we'll just bide where we are until morning."
A shining ghostly thing leapt about in the darkness. Janie's heart went to her mouth. But it was only the men back with a torch made of palm tassel and oil which they had got from a hut. They went on again.
When the Mission yard was reached the men were so tired that they fell down and went to sleep at once. Ma, too, was tired, but her work was not done. She got a hammer and nails and some sheets of iron and knocked up a little lean-to, in which she put the woman and nursed her back to consciousness, and fed and comforted her. Then, utterly worn out, she just lay down where she was in her soiled and damp clothes, and fell sound asleep.
The baby died next day, and the mother grew worse, and there was no hope. She was sore in spirit as well as in body, and sorrowed for her fate and the loss of her husband's love. Ma soothed her, and told her she was going to a better world, where no one would be angry with her for being a twin-mother.
When she passed away the people would not touch or come near her, and so Ma did all that was needful herself, and placed her in a coffin, and then the husband and his slave bore her away and buried her in a lonely spot in the bush.
Poor twin-mothers of Africa!