hills, and then the trouble came.

The immediate cause was overcrowding. Why did we overcrowd?

Friends at home to whom the facts about Temple service were new, were
stirred to earnest prayer. Out here fellow-missionaries helped us to
save the children. God heard the prayer and blessed the work, and
children began to come. Soon our one little room became too full. We had
babies in the bungalow and on our verandah, babies everywhere. Then
money came to build two more rooms, but they were soon too full. At
Neyoor the pressure was worse, for we could only rent two small houses;
and though we put up mat shelters, and the children lived as much as
possible in the open air, it was difficult to manage. But how could we
refuse the little children? The Temple women were ready to take them if
we had refused. Their houses are never too full. There was no other
nursery to which they could be sent. Little children who had passed the
troublesome infant stage could sometimes find a home elsewhere; but only
the Temple houses were open at all times to babies. Could we have
written to the friend who had saved a little child: "Hand her back to
the Temple. It is the will of our Father that this little one should
perish"? Should we have done it? We dare not do it. We prayed that help
would be sent to build new nurseries, and we went on and did our best;
but it was difficult.

We had just reached the hills in early April, and were forbidden to
return, when news reached us of a fatal epidemic of dysentery which had
broken out in the Neyoor nursery. Unseasonable rains had fallen and
driven the babies indoors; this increased the overcrowding. The doctors
were away. Letters telling us about the disaster had been lost--how, we
never knew--so that the second which reached us, taking it for granted
we had the first, gave no details, only the names of the smitten
babes--nineteen of them, and five dead. Then trouble followed trouble.
"While he was yet speaking, there came also another." Some evil men who
had sought to injure us before, caused us infinite anxiety. And for a
time that cannot be counted in days or in weeks it was like living
through a nightmare, when everything happens in painful confusion and
the sense of oppression is complete.

[Illustration: THE NEYOOR NURSERY.]

Out of the maelstrom came a letter from Ponnamal. "We are being
comforted," she wrote. "You will be longing to come to us, but oh, do
not come! If you were here all yo