and Miss Hughes returned to China, they found Yu Kuliang
suffering from tuberculosis. The long years of self-inflicted imprisonment
had left her with no vitality to resist, and the disease was making rapid
progress.

Soon after the doctor's return, Yu Kuliang's mother went away for a visit
of some days. One afternoon during her absence, when Dr. Stone and Miss
Hughes were calling on Yu Kuliang, she told them that she was studying the
Bible, and trying to pray, and added: "I never go near the idols any more.
They are all upstairs in my old cell." Dr. Stone at once said: "If you no
longer believe in the idols, get rid of them. Give them to us." Yu Kuliang
assented immediately, saying, "Take them if you want to," and went upstairs
with Dr. Stone to get them. They brought down a Buddha and a goddess of
mercy, which, after a few moments of further talk and prayer, Dr. Stone and
Miss Hughes took away with them, Yu Kuliang watching them without a murmur.

The next day Dr. Stone and her mother went to see Yu Kuliang again, and
with her consent and approval chopped to pieces a huge wooden idol, which
was too large to carry away. When they were wondering what they should do
with the stump of the body, Yu Kuliang exclaimed, "Throw the horrid thing
into the ditch!" Thus passed out of her life the idols to which she had
prayed for hours at a time, before which she had burned numberless sticks
of incense, beside which she had lived and slept, and which she had made
her most constant companions all the years of her life. The old temple
bell, which had for years been used to call the gods from sleep, was given
to Dr. Stone on the same day.

But when Yu Kuliang's mother returned she was furiously angry--not at the
daughter to whom she was devoted, but at those who had turned her away from
her idols. Dr. Stone took the old woman's hands in hers and pleaded with
her: "You know your daughter does not believe in idols, you know the misery
of her life, you know how she longs for peace; and as long as you harbour
the idols in your home, Jesus cannot come into her heart and dwell there."
The old woman at once broke out, in the tones of one taking the part of an
injured friend, "But if your God is such a mighty one, and has the tens of
thousands of followers you tell us He has, why should He be jealous of our
poor little idols and those who worship them?"

Dr. Stone did not interrupt the tirade which was now poured forth, but
picked up a pie