told
Ponnamal how that same morning she had come across a Hindu woman in
charge of two little girls. The Tamils when they meet, however casually,
have a useful habit of exchanging confidences. The woman had told
Ponnamal's friend what her errand was. Ponnamal's talk about children in
danger recalled the conversation of the morning. In a few hours more
Ponnamal was upon the track of the Hindu woman and her two little
charges. It ended in the two little girls being saved.

CHAPTER IX

Old Devai

SHE has been called "Old Devai" ever since we knew her, twelve years
ago; and she is still active in mind and body. "As I was then, even so
is my strength now for war, both to go out and to come in," she would
tell you with a courageous toss of the old grey head. Her spirit at
least is untired.

We knew her first as a woman of character. One Sunday, in our Tamil
church, a sermon was preached upon the love of the Father as compared
with the love of the world. That Sunday Devai went home and acted upon
the teaching in such fashion that she had to suffer from the scourge of
the tongue in her own particular world. But she went on her way, unmoved
by adverse criticism. Some years later, when we were in perplexity as to
how to set about our search for children in danger of being given to
temples, old Devai offered to help. She was peculiarly suitable, both in
age and in position, for this most delicate work; and we accepted her
offer with thanksgiving. Since then she has travelled far, and followed
many a clue discovered in strange ways and in strange company. Perhaps
no one in South India knows as much as Devai knows about the secret
system by which the Temple altars are supplied with little living
victims; but she has no idea of how to put her knowledge into shape and
express it in paragraph form. We learn most from her when she least
knows she is saying anything interesting.

When first we began the work, our great difficulty was, as it is still,
to get upon the track of the children before the Temple women heard of
them. Once they were known to be available, Temple scouts appeared
mysteriously alert; and it is doubly difficult to get a little child
after negotiations have been opened with the subtle Temple scout. How
often old Devai has come to us sick at heart after a long, fruitless
search and effort to save some little child who, perhaps, only an hour
before her arrival was carried off in triumph by the Temple peopl