The heathen listened in wonder to the words of praise where they had
expected lamentation, and they asked each other what was this strange
power that made men so strong and brave.

And their amazement grew as the chapels, the lovely new chapels of stone
or brick, began to rise from the ruins of the old ones. And not only did
the old ones reappear, new and more beautiful, but as Dr. Mackay and
his native preachers went here and there over the country others peeped
forth like the hepaticas of springtime, until there were not only the
forty original chapels, but in a few years the number had increased to
sixty.

The triumphant shout that the mission had been wiped out ceased
completely, and the people declared that they had been fools to try
to destroy the chapels, for the result had been only bigger and better
ones.

"Look now," said one old heathen, pointing a withered finger to the
handsome spire of the Bang-kah chapel, that lifted itself toward the
sky, "Look now, the chapel towers above our temple. It is larger than
the one we destroyed."

His neighbors crowding about him and gazing up with superstitious awe at
the spire, agreed.

"If we touch this one he will build another and a bigger one," remarked
another man.

"We cannot stop the barbarian missionary," said the old heathen with an
air of conviction.

"No, no one can stop the great Kai Boksu," they finally agreed, and so
they left off all opposition in despair.

Yes, the cry of "Long-tsong bo-khi" had died, and the answer to it was
inscribed on the front of the splendid chapels that sprang up all over
north Formosa. For, just above the main entrance to each, worked out
in stucco plaster, was a picture of the burning bush, and around it in
Chinese the grand old motto:

"Nec tamen consumebatur" ("Yet it was not consumed.")

CHAPTER XII. TRIUMPHAL MARCH

Up and down the length and breadth of north Formosa, seeming to be
in two or three places at once, went Kai Bok-su, during this time of
reviving after the war. He would be in Kelung to-day superintending
the new chapel building, in Tamsui at Oxford College the next day, in
Bangkah preaching a short while after, and no one could tell just
where the next day.

But every one did know that wherever he went, Christians grew stronger
and heathen gave up their idols. The Kap-tsu-lan plain, away on the
eastern coast, seemed to be a sort of pet among all his mission fields,
and he was always turning his