off both my arms--you can see the stumps for that matter. And I told you that I came home to find my wife dying. Her heart had always been weak, I'd known that, and it had gradually grown more feeble. There must have been, indeed there was, a strange sort of telepathy between us. She had had fearful attacks of heart failure on both occasions when the niggers had mutilated me, I learnt on comparing notes.

" But I had known too, somehow, that I must escape at all costs. It was the knowledge that made me try again after each failure. I should have gone on trying to escape as long as I had lived, or rather as long as she had lived. I knelt beside her bed and she put out her arms and laid them round my neck.

"'So you have come back to me before I go,' she said. 'I knew you must, because I called you so. But you have been long in coming, almost too long. But I knew I had to see you again before I died.'

" I broke down then. I was sorely tried. No arms even to put round her!

"'Darling, stay with me for a little, only for a little while!' I sobbed.

"She shook her head feebly. 'It is no use, my dear,' she said, 'I must go.'

"'I'll come with you,' I said, 'I'll not live without you.'

"She shook her head again.

"'You must be brave, Bob. I shall be watching you afterwards just as much as if I still lived on earth. If only I could give you my arms! A poor, weak woman's arms, but better than none, dear.'

"She died some weeks later. I spent all the time at her bedside, I hardly left her. Her arms were round me when she died. Shall I ever feel them round me again? I wonder! You see, they are mine now.

" They came to me gradually. It was very strange at first to have arms and hands which one couldn't see. I used to keep my eyes shut as much as possible, and try to fancy that I had never lost my arms.

"I got used to them in time. But I have always been careful not to let people see me do things that they would know to be impossible for an armless man. That was what took me to Africa again, because I could get lost there and do things for myself with these hands.

"'And they twain shall be one flesh,'" I muttered.

"Yes," he said, "I think the explanation must be something of that 

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