Taking her babe in her arms, and accompanied by the
Burmese children, and one servant, she set out. She went to the city up
the river in a covered boat, and thus she was sheltered from the
scorching sun of an Indian May. But when she arrived at Amarapoora, she
heard that her husband had been taken to a village six miles off. To this
village she travelled in a clumsy cart drawn by oxen. Overcome with
fatigue, she arrived at the prison, and saw her poor husband sitting in
the court chained to another prisoner, and looking very ill. He had
neither hat, nor coat, nor shoes, and his feet were covered with wounds
he had received, as he had been driven over the burning gravel on the way
to the prison: but his wounds had been bound up by a kind heathen
servant, who had torn up his own turban to make bandages.
When the missionary saw his wife approaching with her infant, he felt
grieved on her account, and exclaimed, "Why have you come? You cannot
live here?" But she cared not where she lived, so that she could be near
her suffering husband. She wished to build a bamboo hut at the prison
gate: but the jailor would not allow her. However, he let her live in a
room of his own house. It was a wretched room, with no furniture but a
mat. Here the mother and the children slept that night, while the
servant, wrapped in his cloth, lay at the door. They had no supper that
night. Next day, they bought food in the village, with some silver that
the lady kept carefully concealed in her clothes.
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