ent away. An hour later we met
groups of them coming home from bathing. They would not touch us then.
Afterwards the chief mourners came out and bathed, and went all round
the village wailing. And the last thing I saw, as the sun set over the
hills and the place grew chill and dark, was the old widow, worn out
now, returning home in her wet things, wailing still.

I write this under a sense of the solemnity of being "a servant . . .
separated unto the Gospel." I would not write one word lightly. But oh!
may I ask you to face it? Are we honest towards God? If we were, would
these people be left to die as they are being left to die?

We feel for them. _But feelings will not save souls; it cost God Calvary
to win us._

_It will cost us as much as we may know of the fellowship of His
sufferings, if those for whom He died that day are ever to be won._

. . . . . . .

I am writing in the midst of the sights and the sounds of life. There is
life in the group of women at the well; life in the voices, in the
splash of the water, in the cry of a child, in the call of the mother;
life in the flight of the parrots as they flock from tree to tree; life
in their chatter as they quarrel and scream; life, everywhere life. How
can I think out of all this, back into death again?

But I want to, for you may live for many a year in India without being
allowed to see once what we have seen twice within two months, and it
cannot be for nothing that we saw it. We must be meant to show it to
you.

[Illustration: This needs to be looked into. Gradually the middle
clears. The women are holding each other's hands preparatory to swaying
backwards and forwards as they chant the dirge for the dead. The lamp
(you see its top near the vessel on the right) was lighted as soon as
the old woman died, and placed at her head on the floor. So blindly they
show their sense of the darkness of death. The brass water vessel, with
the leaves laid across its mouth, was filled with the water of
purification. This was poured in a circle on the floor round the body.
The bits of grass are the sacred Kusa grass used in many religious
ceremonies.]

The Picture-catching Missie and I were in the Village of the Tamarind
Tree, when for the second time I saw it. They are very friendly there,
and just as in the Red Lake Village they let us look behind the curtain,
so here again they pushed it back, and let us in, and went on with th