“This was the first we saw of Gwebede. There did not seem to be much hope for him. A little thin boy with a face full of terror, whom the slightest movement made to cry out with pain. He refused to swallow medicine, so we injected under his skin a little dose of that blessed drug that takes away pain, and in a few minutes he was asleep. Then we washed and dressed his wound. A leopard’s teeth are such dirty things that the wound they make is very difficult to get clean. One has to wash and wash and wash for a long time, going carefully into all the holes and corners. “As the days passed the pain became less, and the wound began to heal. For several days Gwebede cried a good deal, and we had to repeat the dose under his skin to put him to sleep. Then we noticed that he was beginning to enjoy his food, and one day the attendant told us that ‘Gwebede had laughed.’ These were good signs. “A few weeks later if you could have seen Gwebede you would have seen that he was no longer thin, but getting quite respectably stout, and also that he was constantly smiling. The night attendant noticed, however, that he sometimes started and cried out in his sleep. This is the way with people that have been hurt by wild beasts. For long afterwards they dream dreadful dreams. Indeed, some of them are afraid to sleep alone. They can’t help thinking that a beast will come into the room. “One day Gwebede’s brothers came to take him home. They said that the whole party from their village were about to start for home. We begged them to leave Gwebede with us to be attended to, and we asked them to come back for him in a month. They said they were afraid to go back without him, because Gwebede’s mother would say, ‘What have you done with Gwebede?’ We told them that Gwebede was not well enough to do without having his wound dressed. They saw also that he was quite happy in the ward. So they decided to go back to their master and do another month’s work, and at the end of the month to come again for Gwebede. “The month passed, Gwebede walked about slowly and sedately, holding his head in the air because his neck was stiff. He got fatter and fatter, till his face grew like a little round moon--a black moon--full of smiles and dimples. He was the jolliest little boy you could imagine. Then came again the big brothers. Gwebede’s neck was now quite healed. The great open wound had closed up and now there was only a scar left. Soon he was dancing and skipping along the road with his brothers, having clean forgotten the stiffness of his neck, and that was the last we saw of little Gwebede.”