nor is involved in that matter. To whom, and of what
nature, would the letter be?"

"A letter to the Company's Resident at Abu, reporting to him that Hindoo
widows are still compelled in this city to burn themselves to death
above their husbands' funeral pyres."

The Rajput grinned. "Does the Resident sahib not know it, then?"

"There will be no chance of his not knowing should my report reach him!"

"I will see, sahib, what can be done, then, in the matter. If I can find
a man, I will bring him to you."

The missionary thanked him and stood watching as the Rajput rode away.
When the horseman's free, lean back had vanished in the inky darkness
his eyes wandered over to a point where tongues of flame licked upward,
casting a dull, dancing, crimson glow on the hot sky. Here and there,
silhouetted in the firelight, he could see the pugrees and occasional
long poles of men who prodded at the embers. Ululating through the din
of tom-toms he could catch the wails of women. He shuddered, prayed a
little, and went in.

That day even the little bazaar fosterlings, whom he had begged, and
coaxed, and taught, had all deserted to be present at the burning of
three widows. Even the lepers in the tiny hospital that he had started
had limped out for a distant view. He had watched a year's work
all disintegrating in a minute at the call of bestial, loathsome,
blood-hungry superstition.

And he was a man of iron, as Christian missionaries go. He had been
hard-bitten in his youth and trained in a hard, grim school. In the Isle
of Skye he had seen the little cabin where his mother lived pulled down
to make more room for a fifty-thousand-acre deer-forest. He had seen his
mother beg.

He had worked his way to Edinburgh, toiled at starvation wages for the
sake of leave to learn at night, burned midnight oil, and failed at the
end of it, through ill health, to pass for his degree.

He had loved as only hard-hammered men can love, and had married after
a struggle the very thought of which would have melted the courage of an
ordinary man, only to see his wife die when her child was born. And even
then, in that awful hour, he had not felt the utterness of misery such
as came to him when he saw that his work in Howrah was undone. He had
given of his best, and all his best, and it seemed that he had given it
for nothing.

"Who was that man, father?" asked a very weary voice through which
courage seemed to live yet, as the tiniest suspi