on being carried in a litter, stricken
with fever. They took him prisoner, and, after some days, slew him as
he stood defenceless before them. Hannington had been sent out to help
Mackay and his fellow-Christians.

Then the King fell ill. He believed that the boy Balikudembe, who had
warned him not to kill the Bishop, had bewitched him. So M'wanga's
soldiers went and caught the lad and led him down to a place where
they lit a fire, and placing the boy over it, burned him slowly to
death.

All through this time Mackay alone had not been really seriously
threatened, for his work and what he was made the King and the
Katikiro and even Mujasi afraid to do him to death.

Then there came a tremendous thunderstorm. A flash of lightning smote
the King's house and it flamed up and burned to ashes. Then King
M'wanga seemed to go mad. He threatened to slay Mackay himself.

"Take, seize, burn the Christians," he cried. And his executioners
and their minions rushed out, captured forty-six men and boys, slashed
their arms from their bodies with their cruel curved knives so that
they could not struggle, and then placed them over the ghastly flames
which slowly wrung the lives from their tortured bodies. Yet the
numbers of the Christians seemed to grow with persecution.

The King himself beat one boy, Apolo Kagwa, with a stick and smote him
on the head, then knocked him down, kicked and stamped upon him. Then
the King burned all his books, crying, "Never read again."

The other men and boys who had become Christians were now scattered
over the land in fear of their lives. Mackay, however, come what may,
determined to hold on. He set his little printing press to work and
printed off a letter which he sent to the scattered Christians. In
Mackay's letter was written these words, "In days of old Christians
were hated, were hunted, were driven out and were persecuted for
Jesus' sake, and thus it is to-day. Our beloved brothers, do not deny
our Lord Jesus!"

At last M'wanga's mad cruelties grew so frightful that all his people
rose in rebellion and drove him from the throne, so that he had to
wander an outcast by the lake-side. Mackay at that time was working
by the lake, and he offered to shelter the deposed King who had only a
short time before threatened his life.

* * * * *

Two years passed; and Mackay, on the lake-side, was building a new
boat in which he hoped to sail to other villages to teac