“This will hurt us all,” he said prophetically, as the two sorrow-stricken women came back to Shupanga with the terrible tidings. He knew well that the Portuguese would misrepresent the object of missionary settlements to be to interfere among the tribes, and even to make use of military force, so adding to the mischief instead of abating it. “We must bow to the will of Him who doeth all things well,” he writes; “but I cannot help feeling sadly disturbed in view of the effect the news may have at home. I shall not swerve a hair’s-breadth from my work while life is spared.” Some weeks were spent in arranging for the return of the bereaved women, who did not sail for home till April 2nd. Meanwhile an even darker cloud of sorrow was preparing to break over Livingstone. His wife had only returned to him to die. She had been to Kuruman, where their youngest child was born. Then she had returned to Scotland to see the other children. But her longing to be at her husband’s side was intense, and at last she had come back to him. On April 21st she was taken ill with fever, and on the evening of Sunday, 27th, in the presence of Dr. Stewart and her husband she sank to rest. Dr. Stewart tells us how he found Livingstone “sitting by the side of a rude bed formed of boxes, but covered with a soft mattress, on which lay his dying wife.” For the first time in his life Livingstone says he would be content to die. He laid her to rest under a baobab tree on “Shupanga brae.” His diary reveals the agony of his heart. Henceforth “the red hills and white vales” of Shupanga are with him in all his wanderings. “In some other spot I may have looked at, my own resting-place may be allotted. I have often wished that it might be in some far-off still deep forest, where I may sleep sweetly till the resurrection morn.” “I loved her when I married her, and the longer I lived with her the more I loved her.... Oh! my Mary, my Mary, how often we have longed for a quiet home, since you and I were cast adrift at Kolobeng; surely the removal by a kind Father who knoweth our frame means that He rewarded you by taking you to the best home, the eternal one in the Heavens.”